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REPORTS 155 REPORTS Folklore Research Resources in East European Studies: The Library and Archives of the American Hungarian Foundation Judit Hajnal Ward Rutgers University New Jersey, U.S.A. Sylvia Csűrös Clark St. John’s University New York, U.S.A. Resources for researching the folklore of immigrant groups vary from culture to culture. Hungarian Americans constitute several generations of immigrants who arrived in different waves. Their history of immigration shows strong similarities to that of many other ethnic groups from East Europe and their reasons for leaving can be attributed to the turmoil in the region in the late nineteenth and in the twentieth centuries. Folklore parallels to other ethnic groups have yet to be defined by scholars. A unique source for research in the area of folklore is the Library and Archives of the American Hungarian Foundation and it is a resource that can be used by folklorists and other scholars in many fields, not just by those interested in Hungarian Studies. Effects of the revolution in information access on research The rapid changes in information access and communication created new paths for research, publication, and scholarly communication. Subject guides on the homepages of academic libraries offer detailed descriptions of the collections themselves and of access policy. They have been created to assist scholars in deciding whether to access a resource electronically from a remote research location or to plan a trip and conduct research on site. Researchers increasingly need collection descriptions, guides, and finding aids to keep focused, to map out new directions for their research, and to be able to find and retrieve all relevant data. Browsing or searching large aggregated vendors’ databases on any topic helps in locating full-text articles, bibliographic records, or just new research ideas. Popular search engines geared toward the academic community, such as Google Scholar among others, provide FOLKLORICA 2009, Vol. XIV 156 access to an incredible amount of material in all research fields, affording more visibility to traditional library and archive collections. Library collections related to Hungarian Studies in the United States Initiatives to preserve Hungarian heritage in the United States by fostering Hungarian ethnic collections in libraries, archives, museums, cultural and folklore centers have been successful to such an extent that it would be a heroic task to compile an organized list with detailed information about all Hungarian holdings. In the past decades, numerous electronic resources of differing value were added to serve the information needs of the research community. In addition to the noteworthy collection at the Library of Congress, a number of large academic libraries feature Hungarian collections. These include Columbia, Yale, Harvard, and Indiana universities. Significant Hungarian collections at public libraries should also be noted and include the New York Public Library and the Cleveland Public Library. Their collections have played a considerable role in the process of assimilation as well as in the construction and preservation of Hungarian identity [Kovács 1987: 248-260]. Comprehensive data on Hungarian collections in the United States have not been assembled to date and no exhaustive study of the vast resources that Hungarian collections contribute to research and scholarship has been published. In the 1990s, the National Széchényi Library (Budapest, Hungary) launched a survey to inventory Hungarian collections outside Hungary and managed to publish its inventories of Canada, Australia, and several Western European countries [Kovács and Faragó 1994]. Data on collections in the United States, however, were not published. The best data come from WorldCat, the global catalog covering libraries throughout the world as well as previous individual research studies, and these indicate that about 165 libraries in the United States have Hungarian collections. A recent study resulted in the compilation of a comprehensive and up-to-date guide to Slavic and East European Collections in North America. It surveyed the libraries of nearly 90 institutions, and includes references to academic libraries with Hungarian collections [Urbanic and Feinberg 2004: 1-193]. Hungarian ethnic collections in the United States Hungarian American libraries and holdings are considered an important type of ethnic resource outside the home country.(1) Generally REPORTS 157 speaking, ethnic collections evolve in response to a community’s need for reading material in the mother tongue. Establishing and maintaining ethnic collections also reflects the efforts of the community to preserve cultural heritage and pass it on to future generations. Another important factor is the need in the community and the host society for materials to use in the teaching of the minority culture. The host community may also be motivated by a desire to conduct research on a particular community and its culture. As a result of these different needs, a variety of ethnic collections have been produced by the Hungarian American community and these complement those resources developed and maintained in American public and academic libraries. Although the two types of collections have their similarities, Hungarian ethnic libraries, those maintained by communities and individuals from the Hungarian American communities, do differ from collections maintained by large institutions. Community collections depend on individual initiative and partnerships within the community rather than on the American library system. The relationship between the community and the home country also plays a significant political and professional role. Finally, technical advancements, including access, communication, and transportation are also decisive [Kovács 2008]. Throughout history, wherever Hungarian communities have formed, library collections have evolved as one of the indicators of national identity. The earliest collections, those comprised of a couple hundred books, were established by Hungarian organizations. Societies, associations, religious communities, Hungarian houses and cultural centers were interested in serving the popular demand for reading material, and their number is estimated to roughly equal the number of organizations [Kovács 2008: 25-36]. Dependent on support from the members of the community and Hungarian resources, community collections suffered the attrition that was inevitable as the generation of Hungarian Americans they served advanced in age. Fragments of collections of this type were identified by Hungarian visiting Fulbright scholar Ilona Kovács from the ownership stamps in the library collection of the Bethlen Home, Ligonier, PA. This is a reference library which aims to document and preserve Hungarian heritage and came to house many of the early collections. Hungarian Americans and ethnic identity Hungarian Americans represent an immigrant group that has a history of cherishing and preserving its ethnic and cultural heritage. This FOLKLORICA 2009, Vol. XIV 158 phenomenon can be partly explained by the traditions established by a major wave of immigrants that arrived in the United States at the turn of the previous century. First-generation East-European immigrants who hoped to return had hardly any option other than to maintain their ethnic identification; for them it was an inescapable part of what they were [Gellén 1985: 25-35]. These immigrants, often classified more precisely as migrant workers, crossed the Atlantic Ocean with the sole purpose of making a decent income; they never intended to stay in the United States. Many of them returned to the home country permanently after a few years, while others traveled back and forth between the two countries several times. A significant proportion, however, never had the chance to return to their homeland. Political events and the economic situation in the twentieth century precluded any possibility of going back. Many of these immigrants, mostly peasants from rural Hungary, never relinquished their mother tongue, their national identity, or their desire to establish their own ethnic community [Degh 1966: 551-556]. Further hindered from returning by immigration laws and quotas in the United States and in Hungary, this first wave of Hungarian Americans found themselves in a situation that favored preservation of the inherited Hungarian culture. New groups of carriers of traditional culture evolved both from the descendants of the first wave of immigrants and from new waves of arrivals from Hungary. Obviously, the American-born sons and daughters of Hungarian immigrants could not completely ignore the surrounding culture and quickly assimilated into American society. Many of them, however, became just as concerned with preserving and perpetuating their cultural heritage. Despite differences in their background, the drive to establish and promote Hungarian American communities, with or without the Hungarian language, has turned out to be a major part of their identity in the United States. Various local and transnational networks developed by ethnic institutions include churches, mutual aid societies, schools, and youth organizations.(2) Religion was one significant factor in maintaining Hungarian heritage and identity. Hungarian churches were built at the beginning of the twentieth century and vibrant Hungarian communities bloomed around them, providing an opportunity to practice religion and cherish Hungarian culture. Churches also served