Input and Output: the Process of Fieldwork, Archiving and Research in Folklore

Input and Output: The Process of Fieldwork, Archiving and Research in Folklore. Edited by Ulrika Wolf-Knuts in collaboration with Anders Salomonsson, Ann Helene Bolstad Skjelbred and Rionach ui Ogain. Turku: Nordic Network of Folklore, 2001. 191 pp. 30 [euro] (hbk). ISBN 952-12-0848-1

The papers in this book result from a collaborative Nordic Network project, "The Folklorist's Fieldwork and Archiving as a Process," and provide insight into a range of practical experiences in the establishment of archives and into some of the personality clashes and personal jockeying for positions and credibility that went on during this establishment. They also discuss collecting techniques, problems and solutions.

Editor Ulrika Wolf-Knuts begins the book by giving a short summary of the papers and tries to link them together. However, I found this a bit of a barrier to the book, mainly because it started by using the words "problematise" and "problematisation" three times in the first paragraph. Apart from the fact that I think these words hateful, I never quite understood what the author was trying to say by the end of the paper. The remaining papers, which concentrate on ways of collecting, research, and the collaborations--or otherwise--between archives provide useful food for thought in all collecting processes.

Much of the material in Scandinavian archives appears to have been contributed by a network of informants using standard questionnaires. The papers here provide some interesting warnings about material collected in this way and occasionally demonstrate that context and inflection are important in analysing material, and that the prejudices of the collector will also govern what is collected.

Another element in archiving folklore materials is accessible storage and means for making this material available. Controlling availability of personal details of sources/informants is also important. Today many archivists are seeking to "digitise" their collections by storing them on computer and making them available through the internet. However, I have a particular worry about this--it should always be remembered that we can read a five-hundred-year-old manuscript but have difficulty reading a ten-year-old computer disc. Currently there is no archival quality computer storage material (CD disks do degrade) and I was pleased to read that Tiina Mahlamaki and Pasi Enges note this fact and give a warning about being too dependent upon new technology in their paper From the "Field to the Net: Analysing, Cataloguing and Digitising the Material in the Saami Folklore Project." However, I felt a little uncomfortable with Pille Runnel's paper "Conducting Ethnographic Research on the Internet." I was not sure what it was telling us, but think that, although the internet has some good uses, and I have used internet sites to obtain first-hand accounts of weddings in different cultures, it is a more problematical tool for verifiable ethnographic research and could provide more difficulties than answers.

As an account of work in folklore archives currently, or recently, being carried out, this group of papers is informative and demonstrates problems and ways for regional folklore collecting collaborations. However, Input and Output: The Process of Fieldwork, Archiving and Research in Folklore seems to be very specific to the Scandinavian experience and does not, to my mind, suggest any substantially new ideas or present any radical ideas for archiving and retrieving information.

George Monger, The Folklore Society

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