Folklore archives of Moldova's Academy of Sciences conserved, digitalized with support of United Kingdom

Chisinau, 11 January /MOLDPRES/ - Thousands of folklore works collected by employees of Moldova’s Academy of Sciences (ASM) and managed by the Institute of Cultural Heritage and Institute of Romanian Philology Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, in 2018 were digitalized and conserved within a project which benefited from financing on behalf of the United Kingdom. The project’s results were unveiled at a today’s conference held at ASM.   

Contacted by MOLDPRES, PhD, musicologist, director of the Institute of Cultural Heritage, project manager Victor Ghilas said that, through the grant, Saving the material of folklore archive, preserved in Chisinau, Moldova, won by him and managed by the Eurocentric Association from Bucharest, an important part of the literary and musical folklore archive, collected by the Moldovan Branch of the Academy of Sciences from the USSR on the period 1946-1990, had been digitalized and was to be made accessible online. The grant is provided by British Library, with the support of the Arcadia Charity Fund, within the Endangered Archives Programme, the goal of which is to facilitate the scientific research through identifying and conserving the archive material on the pre-industrial societies from all over the world, which runs to risk of being deteriorated.     

According to Ghilas, the digitalized material is made up of 450 volumes of written notes and recordings on about 500 magnetic tapes of folk songs, carols, tales and many other folklore works, collected on the present territory of Moldova, as well as on the territory of the neighbouring Ukraine, in the Soviet period, conserved in bad conditions till the carrying out of the project, because of the poor financing of the culture sector. In a short period, it could be fully consulted on non-commercial purposes, with the observance of laws in force, on the site dedicated to the project (http://folkloricarchival.asm.md/) and on the special section of the site British Library (https://eap.bl.uk/ ).   

For his part, a PhD in philology, project’s team member Ludmila Simanschi said that, for the first time ever, a comprehensive register had been created about the literary folklore material from the period 1945-1990, collected in Moldova, Ukraine and Caucasus. The oldest folklore material is a note-book of ballads, collected by writer George Meniuc in 1945.  In the context, PhD in philology Mariana Cocieru, who managed the sound material, especially the musical one, said that the latter had been collected beginning with 1959, when the first tape recorders appeared in Moldova.

At the conference, the deputy director of the National Institute of Heritage from Romania, consultant of the project Bogdan Sandric stressed that the project had been successfully carried out and ended in due time.

The project, Saving the material of folklore archive, preserved in Chisinau, Moldova, was initiated on 15 January 2018 and lasted one year. The cost of the project is 34,200 pounds.