The process of digitising archives, widespread in the previous decade, has not omitted musical resources, and offers their users new functionalities. These measures can improve researchers’ work, as digital material is easy to localise and access. However, a question still remains of the subject of oral history, which acts like audiovisual documents, of its value and durability, the present results and the consequences of the common access to the materials. It is also a question of the effectiveness of multidimensional grassroot initiatives, such as creating common virtual collections of materials. What possibilities have we got for the folklore musical archives currently being discovered? Will their digitisation make them suddenly valuable in the society? In this text, the author attempts to diagnose the problem of digitisation of musical archives as exemplified by the ethnomusicological collection of Adolf Dygacz. The author highlights the importance of local history that is typical for human studies, which has always been part of folklore studies, but has not been considered in the light of memory studies until recently.

The process of digitising archives, widespread in the previous decade, has not omitted musical resources, and offers their users new functionalities. These measures can improve researchers’ work, as digital material is easy to localise and access. However, a question still remains of the subject of oral history, which acts like audiovisual documents, of its value and durability, the present results and the consequences of the common access to the materials. It is also a question of the effectiveness of multidimensional grassroot initiatives, such as creating common virtual collections of materials. What possibilities have we got for the folklore musical archives currently being discovered? Will their digitisation make them suddenly valuable in the society? In this text, the author attempts to diagnose the problem of digitisation of musical archives as exemplified by the ethnomusicological collection of Adolf Dygacz. The author highlights the importance of local history that is typical for human studies, which has always been part of folklore studies, but has not been considered in the light of memory studies until recently.