- Category
- Understanding Folklore
- Reading time
- 4 min.
- Sources
- Source-based guide with original editorial learning activities
First establish what you are actually looking at
A search result, archive catalogue entry, manuscript image, transcription and modern retelling are different objects. Before citing, note which one you opened. A short description can help locate a work, but reading it does not mean you have read the manuscript.
A useful note might say: “Catalogue description checked; the manuscript text was not examined for this work.” This does not diminish the research: it identifies the available evidence precisely. If you saw only a search snippet, narrow your statement further.
A real example: LMD I 9
The Lithuanian Folklore Archives describes LMD I 9 as Jonas Mickeliūnas’s collection, compiled and recorded in Dargužiai in 1911. It separately gives an inventory date of 1947 and states that the informants are not named. This example relies specifically on that catalogue description.
It establishes who recorded the collection, but cannot supply a biography for an unnamed teller. Nor does 1947 become the text’s composition date. The entry also allows you to distinguish the village’s modern administrative location from the place wording in the original.
An archive reference is an address, not an interpretation
LMD I 9 identifies a collection. Citing an individual work within it also requires its item number, page or another reference used by the archive. Copy the reference accurately, retaining spaces, Roman numerals and parentheses where the source uses them.
Do not merge every number in your notes. Keep the archive reference, publication page and online record identifier separate. A single text may have all three, serving different purposes when someone tries to find it.
Who speaks, who records and who edits
An informant is the person from whom a work was collected; a collector recorded or gathered it; an editor prepared the publication. These roles may overlap, but do not combine them without evidence. An unknown name is itself a limit of the information available.
Next check the text’s status: does it preserve dialect, use standardised language, or present a translation, excerpt or summary? Compare editorial notes with the visible text. Write your own explanation separately so readers can distinguish recorded words from present-day commentary.
Catalogue fields are not the whole work
The institute’s electronic proverb catalogue description explains the attention given to type headings. A heading and an individual variant are therefore different things. With the open riddle dataset, likewise read field descriptions instead of guessing a date’s or number’s meaning from its appearance.
The Lithuanian Open Data Portal labels the riddle dataset CC BY 4.0. That label belongs to this dataset; it does not establish reuse terms for a photograph, recording or modern commentary found elsewhere. In your working source list, keep rights information attached to the particular object.
A six-field note for further work
For each selected text, fill in six fields: title or opening words; collection and archive reference; informant and collector; place and recording date; the publication or recording you consulted; and changes you made. Explicitly mark information that is missing.
Finally ask whether someone else could find the same variant and understand what you changed. If so, your reference is doing its most important job. Naming an institution without identifying an individual record will usually not be enough.
