Tradition Archives Meet
Digital Humanities
2nd Workshop

DHNB2025 conference
Tartu (Estonia) and Zoom
March 4, 2025, 09:00–13:00 (EET)
traditionarchives.org/tradition-archives-meet-digital-humanities-2nd-workshop
dhnb.eu/conferences/dhnb2025

Folklore archives hold centuries of cultural knowledge – from narratives and songs to beliefs, customs, and everyday practices – now meeting the possibilities (and challenges) of the digital age. This workshop brings together researchers, archivists, and tech experts to explore how digital tools, AI, and community-driven initiatives are transforming the way we collect, preserve, and analyze folklore heritage. From multilingual data linking to the realities of sustaining digital archives beyond short-term projects, we’ll dive into the complexities of rethinking archival practices, leveraging computational methods to enhance access, analysis, and collaboration in the study of folklore archives.

Organized by Sanita Reinsone (University of Latvia), Kyrre Kverndokk (University of Bergen), Kati Kallio (Finnish Literature Society), Fredrik Skott (Institute for Language and Folklore), Mari Väina (Estonian Literary Museum), and Trausti Dagsson (The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies), this workshop is a space for exchanging ideas, sharing hard-won lessons, and mapping where folklore archiving – and the study of folklore collections – is headed next. 

Whether you're knee-deep in digital archives or just curious about the intersection of digital humanities and tradition archives, join our workshop in Tartu (March 4, 2025) or on Zoom. 

❗️For those, attending the workshop remotely – this might not be the most high-tech hybrid setup. We’ll be working with a laptop, webcam and Zoom, so while we’ll do our best to keep things clear and “heardable,” you might experience the occasional sound glitch or a speaker briefly fading into the background.

This workshop is part of the pre-conference programme of the Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries 2025 (DHNB2025) Conference, held in Tartu, Estonia, from March 3–8, 2025. More details at DHNB2025.

Schedule

WS08: Tradition Archives Meet Digital Humanities II

Part I

Chair: ➡ Sanita Reinsone (University of Latvia)

09:10 – 09:30 ➤ Classification of Instrumental Folk Music Recordings with Machine Learning (.pdf)
Tanel Torn
Estonian Literary Museum, Estonia

09:30 – 09:50 ➤ Copies, Duplicates, Forgeries: Surprises via Similarity Calculation (.pdf)
Liina Saarlo¹, Kati Kallio²,³, Maciej Janicki³, Mari Väina¹
¹ Estonian Literary Museum, Estonia
² Finnish Literature Society, Finland
³ University of Helsinki, Finland

09:50 – 10:10 ➤ Estonian and Finnish Soldiers’ War Songs During the Imperial War in the Balkans (1877–1878)
Aytac Yurukcu
University of Eastern Finland, Finland

10:10 – 10:30 ➤ Automatic Subject Indexing of Sámi Oral History Interviews with Whisper and ChatGPT
Johannes Widegren (.pdf)
Linnaeus University, Sweden

10:30 – 10:50 ➤ The Does and Don’ts of Volunteer-based Digitalisation Initiative at the Lithuanian Folklore Archives (.pdf)
Asta Skujytė-Razmienė 
Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, Lithuania

☕ 11:00 – 11:30 Coffee Break

Part II

Chair: ➡ Kati Kallio (Finnish Literature Society)

11:30 – 11:50 ➤ Garamantas.lv – Overview and Critical Reflections on a Decade of Digital Folklore Archiving (.pdf)
Sandis Laime¹, Sanita Reinsone²
¹ Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art, University of Latvia
² Faculty of Humanities, University of Latvia

11:50 – 12:10 ➤ Advancing Citizen Science and Digital Accessibility: The Development of Folke, Isof’s Digital Archive Platform (remote)
Kamilla Kärrstedt, Rico Simke
Institute for Language and Folklore, Sweden

12:10 – 12:30 ➤ SAMLA: Some Reflections on the Development of a Trans-Institutional Online Tradition Archive (.pdf, .mp4)
Kyrre Kverndokk
University of Bergen, Norway

12:30 – 12:50 ➤ Transforming Livonian Folklore Archives into a Multifaceted Digital Resource (.pdf)
Valts Ernštreits
University of Latvia Livonian Institute, Latvia

12:50 – 13:00 ➤ Final Discussion & Closing Remarks