Éva Schmidt's legacy

As a natural result of her wide ranging activities, Éva Schmidt's legacy is quite diverse, ranging from her collected materials through her scientific publications to the immeasurable scope of her radiant intellect’s impact. The aim of creating the Éva Schmidt Archive is to preserve, organize, gather together and unite the different parts of the legacy while also – in line with Éva Schmidt's will – to process and present them. This is a primarily academic task: the vast collection and the related notes require years of immersed scientific work. On the other hand, it is also an organizational and technical project, as the different parts of the legacy are located at different institutions in Hungary and Western Siberia, in several copies, on various data carriers, which means that their identification and the clarification of the relevant regulations is far beyond the task of classical inventorying (which not a trivial one in itself).

Most of the publications are in Hungarian and Russian, but there are also some texts in Khanty: folklore pieces published in newspapers as well as introductory studies. The writings transformed to searchable format will be made available – depending on authors' and publishers' copyrights – in the writings by Éva Schmidt menu.

However, in addition to securing online access, these will also be republished in print: the volumes of the Éva Schmidt Library were already created in this spirit, and the series continues.

The essence of Éva Schmidt’s activity lies in collecting linguistic, ethnographic and folklore materials among the Khanty and Mansi, so the audio-visual material is the central unit of the collection. Its code links the notes, translations and analyses generated in processing the material with the original recording.

The originals and multiple copies of the recordings made between 1970 and 1991 are in Hungary, mostly in the Institute of Ethnology and the Institute for Musicology, where Éva Schmidt has placed them. Already in 1991, at the time of the foundation of the Northern Khanty Folklore Archive the Hungarian and Russian parties ruled that the originals to be collected after the time of the foundation will forever stay in the Ob-Ugric region, and copies will be transported to Hungary. In accordance with this, Éva Schmidt brought home copies yearly, and at the time of her death, the inventorying team sent by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences made a copy of the full audio-visual material there, and transported it to Hungary. Copies of the video recordings add up to 360 hours, those of the audio recordings amount to 400 hours. These have been digitized, but their processing could only commence in 2022, as Éva Schmidt locked the legacy for 20 years in her will (in 2002). During this period, the legacy was preserved by the Research Institute for Linguistics, (today Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics). The preparatory phase of processing began in 2021, and the actual work started in 2022 at the Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics and at the Institute of Ethnology. Regarding the original recordings that were left in Belojarskij, we have been informed that the material was transferred to the Research Institute for Ob-Ugric Peoples in Khanty-Mansijsk, as the Belojarskij archive operates as a branch of this institute. The material was also digitized in Khanty-Mansijsk, and some parts have been made available in the institution’s online archive. Processing also began in 2022 in Belojarskij.

The audio and video materials will be published upon their processing: transcribing them and identifying, translating and adding notes to Éva Schmidt’s records. This task is the most time intensive, and it also requires knowledge of the Khanty language, so the publication can be expected successively, and in small steps. The processed materials can be viewed by selecting them from the continuously extended Catalogue.

In processing the collected materials, ethical considerations also need to be kept in mind in addition to the professional aspects. Éva Schmidt gave several instructions on when, how and by whom each material can be accessed. Evidently, when planning the schedule of processing, the materials not subject to any kind of ban – e.g. the ones already published by Éva Schmidt in some form, or used as educational materials – will get the primary focus.

As opposed to the audio materials, the original copies of Éva Schmidt’s handwritten journals and records were taken to Hungary, so they can be studied together with the material of the preceding period. (Copies of these types of sources were left in Belojarskij.) The majority of the paper based materials are texts recorded in Khanty (and in a smaller part in Mansi) language, indexes to materials collected by herself and earlier researchers, educational aids, maps. In addition to the original manuscripts, they also contain the xerox copies, printed versions of computer files, manuscripts and proofread copies of her publications. In this case, the organization of the legacy means comparing the different versions of materials with similar contents, selecting the latest versions created or amended by Éva Schmidt, and matching the written text records with the appropriate audio or video materials. Based on the preliminary organization, Éva Schmidt seems to have made transcripts of the words of folklore pieces featured in the recordings, but she did not usually prepare translations to these, or transcribe the texts of ethnographic data gathering. In addition to organizing the transcripts, their publication should also be preceded by cross checking them (e.g. if they cover the full text), complementing where necessary, and preparing the translations. This actually coincides with the publication of the audio and video material, which, as we have already noted, is a task that requires much time and a variety of competences.

Processing text files and tables that partially overlap with the content of paper based materials is made difficult primarily because of the rapid change of technology, with the programs, fonts and formats used in the 1990s being outdated and cumbersome to convert. This is made even more difficult by the fact that Éva Schmidt used Cyrillic program versions, as well as fonts and codes that differ from those used in Hungary. Therefore, the first step is to generate the file versions that can be used today, and only after this can the exploration of content begin. The reconstruction of content is supported greatly by versions printed out earlier and preserved in paper form.

Éva Schmidt already took photos during her first expedition in 1970, so her legacy contains a rich photographic material (1500 photo negatives and 500 diapositives; paper images made from these and ones acquired as gifts). However, the identification of the locations and the persons, objects in the photos often seems impossible without the knowledge that the participants possess. We trust in the support from our Khanty and Mansi colleagues. After digitisation and successful content exploration, the photos can be viewed in the Catalogue.

A faithful imprint of her science organization work is the documentation related to the Belojarskij archive on one hand, and her letters and applications written in a variety of matters on the other hand. In the meantime, her work plans and reports give a regular account of her scientific activity. Based on this realization, her work plans and yearly reports between 1991 and 2002 were published in the first volume of the Éva Schmidt Library. However, there is still abundant source material in the legacy, which is being processed at the archives of the Institute of Ethnography, which used to be Éva Schmidt’s place of employment.

Several copies from Éva Schmidt’s private library, as well as a collection of copies of hard to access publications that she collected are part of the legacy. These sources can also be of help during the work of processing, and they can be published depending on copyrights.