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Online Archive of Intangible Cultural Heritage: Ethical and Legal Issues

Following the current trend of opening archives to the public and facilitating access to archival material, the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research (Croatia) is developing and customizing its special archive of intangible cultural heritage for publication on the Internet. To that purpose, we are working on digitization of our material and creating a modern digital repository aligned with Europeana. Joining to the network environment, on one hand, opens up new possibilities for improving our services, but on the other hand we are faced with many challenges related to the fields of ethics and legislation. The specificity of our archive is the fact that the material is collected through scientific-research activities and field studies, and we have been wondering to what extent is it possible to open our archives to the public? Will the users of the online archive in its further distribution respect the rule of stating the source and the author? The questions of the ownership and authorship of the images / recordings don't lead us to confusion as much as the issue of legal and ethical rights of our informants does. We consider that we are obligated to provide free public access to information about holdings in the possession of the Institute - particularly how they would be available to interested parties of the scientific and cultural community - but we still need to retain some control over the distribution and use of material. Thanks to the possibilities of the precisely planned repository system, we are on the trail of finding a solution to most of these problems.

open archives, digitization, cultural heritage, ethical issues, legal issues

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