Working Group on Archives

Tradition archives in motion: sounding out good practices and challenges with folk collections International Conference, 29 June – 1 July 2026, Freiburg, Germany

Organized by the Centre for Popular Culture and Music, University of Freiburg in cooperation with the SIEF Working Group on Archives and the Institute for Cultural Analysis of the Germans of Eastern Europe

Folklore and tradition archives, as well as GLAM institutions in general, are making more and more materials available online in a mediatised world. Resources such as online collections enable direct access to ethnographic and historical sources and enhance research possibilities; curated online dissemination and exhibitions present selected holdings and research results. As the internet is a very audiovisual medium, such content is often built around attractive visual and sound documents in order to reach out to the general public and to communities connected to and interested in the collections.

Ongoing discussions in our field focus on the potentials and challenges that are created once the step into the digital realm has been taken. Collections of culture, in the form of digitised and born-digital data, become ‘mobile’: archival staff envision and implement new ways of processing, researching, presenting, and communicating information, while considering participatory modes of design for research and archiving. These changes come with a whole range of conceptual and technical considerations that shape the ways in which folk and ethnographic archives deal with folklore/cultural heritage, partner institutions, and communities.

The conference aims to address topical issues such as long-term safeguarding, digitisation, access to collections, community management, and target audiences, to name a few. While typical discussions often focus on ‘best practice’ examples, we would also like to spotlight what is feasible by asking what ‘good practice’ is in times of scarce resources, technological uncertainties, and institutional emphasis on ‘visibility’.

More on the conference at: https://www.siefhome.org/wg/arch/events
and: https://uni-freiburg.de/zpkm/aktuelles/