Metadata can be defined as data about data. When indexing, classifying, describing and archiving folklore materials one of the basic questions is always what is "data" in folklore? Are the separate folklore items (songs, legends, proverbs, rituals etc.) "data", or is "data" better understood as physical objects or documents (manuscrips, tapes, videocassettes etc.). In the past in the Folklore archives, the bias was towards thinking in terms of folklore items. With the change in the nature of the materials and development in the field of electronic data processing and management systems the concept of "folkore item" has been losing ground and the focus has been more on bigger units of data, very often as large (or even larger) as the actual physical objects.

　　The presentation surveys the different ways of indexing, classifying, describing and archiving folklore materials in the Folklore Archives of the Finnish Literature Society, in past and in present. Recently issues like access to electronic information resources and services in internet and long-term preservation are becoming more and more important and even crucial for research institutions like the archives. This situation makes new kinds of demands also for archives and forces them much more strongly to adhere to standard metadata structures in their archiving practices.

Source:IEL