CENTRE FOR ETHNOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTATION AND INFORMATION

Centre for Ethnographic Documentation and Information of Polish Ethnological Society (ODIE) with the seat in Łódź.

The centre was established at the initiative of prof. Kazimiera Zawistowicz-Adamska in 1968 by the Main Board of PES. Initially, it was led by the professor herself, and in the years 1970-2011 by prof. Bronisława Kopczyńska-Jaworska. Currently it is headed by Dr. Inga Kuźma.

The main objective of the Centre was to collect information on the Polish academic movement, folklore activities and literature in the fields of ethnography, ethnology, cultural anthropology, folklore studies and related sciences.

Based on its collection the Centre published information about ethnological conferences, exhibitions, ethnographic researches, as well as about the activities of folk artisans and craftsmen in the “Lud” (eng. “People”) magazine and in other publications (see Zakrzewska, T. The Bibliography of Ethnographic MA, Doctoral and Ph.D Theses of Polish Universities in the years 1946-1975, PWN, 1979, Warsaw.; Useable Beauty, or Beauty in Extinction. The report on execution of “Disappearing Professions” programme under the Ministry of Culture and Art, PTL, 1997, Łódź.)

Since 1986 the Centre has made efforts to create a digital bibliographic database of ethnological sciences. On that basis there was published a five-volume bibliography of the current Polish ethnography for the years 1961-1990, two volumes of retrospective bibliography for the years 1926-1939 and a bibliography of the contents of the "Lud" magazine for the years 1895-1985 as well as the “Literatura Ludowa” magazine (eng. "Folk Literature") for the years 1957-1980.

The digitalised bibliographic database created by the Centre was used, among other things, for the development of selected bibliographic sets for European publishers, such as International Bibliography of Social Science / Anthropology (published at the initiative of UNESCO, edited in London) and the Internationale Volkskundliche Bibliographie (published until 1999 under the auspices of the SIEF and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Volkskunde - printed bibliographies IVB ceased to be issued after 1999., IVB itself ceased to operate in 2010.)

In the years 2003-2007, as part of the research project "Bibliography of the Polish Ethnography Online" the Centre had modernized and combined all of the digital bibliographic databases in order to make Internet access available, and has provided access to the complete bibliography on its page: http://etnobibliografia.pl/. This bibliography is complemented on a regular basis.