Researchers from nine universities and three institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences have begun work on the ‘Lexicon of Polish folklore’. The three-volume publication will contain more than 300 entries and is scheduled to be completed in five years.

The project of the Polish Folklore Society and Nicolaus Copernicus University (UMK) is being developed under a grant from the National Programme for the Development of the Humanities. The aim of the work of more than a dozen specialists is to create a publication in printed and electronic form containing comprehensive information on the most important forms and phenomena of Polish folklore.

The entries in the lexicon will make up a synthetic description of Polish folk, professional and environmental traditions, showing their richness, complexity and diversity, as well as their interconnections, interethnic contexts and processes of transformation.

In addition to the 3-volume printed publication, an electronic version is also envisaged. It will take the form of a freely accessible Internet service with photographs, audio and video files illustrating selected folklore phenomena.

A specialised search engine will allow the formulation of complex questions and full-text search (for any phrase within an entry). Once the project has been completed, the electronic lexicon will be able to be updated and expanded on an ongoing basis, either by adding new entries or extending existing ones.

The lexicon is aimed both at specialists in the humanities and social sciences and at a wide audience beyond the academics – regionalists, teachers and students, artists and cultural animators.

The creators of the lexicon do not rule out translating it into English, thanks to which Polish folklore and its research would be included in international folklore studies. The project has received more than PLN 732,000 from the National Programme for the Development of the Humanities.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński