Open Folklore

Collected by: Indiana University Web Collections

Archived since: Sep, 2011

Description:

There are many web sites devoted to folklore and folklife, some created by academic programs or public sector and non-profit organizations, and others developed by enthusiasts and amateur interest groups. There is much of value in all of these sites, but they all suffer from two problems that all web sites are heir to. First, they are notoriously ephemeral and lack dependable preservation, making it difficult to reliably locate material after the passage of time. Second, generic Internet search engines like Google are not precise, especially in a popular field like folklore. This means that identifying reliable scholarly content in a sea of popular, and sometimes unreliable, online content poses a greater challenge for those interested in folklore topics than it does in other areas of scholarship. The Open Folklore initiative will tackle these issues by selecting reliable, content-rich folklore web sites and creating searchable archive copies of them with the permission of the web site owners.

Subject:   Arts & Humanities,  Folklore