Abstracts:

The Propp Center is a non-commercial independent organization engaged in the traditional culture investigation within the framework of the Theory of Literature Department at the Faculty of Philology, St. Petersburg State University. Besides purely academic and educational purposes of the Center its activities has also to a great extent been aimed at organizing all kinds of fieldwork and folklore expeditions. During many years of research work a considerable amount of data has been accumulated. To make these archives available for a wider academic community the Propp Center created a web-site (www.folk.ru) containing special folklore database. But the folklore object is a specific conjoint of verbal and symbolic as well as visual and action codes. The latter two elements are equally important and therefore should also be represented in a certain way because voiced texts alone don t reflect the complicated reality of traditional culture in a proper way. In this view the Propp Center scholars offer a project, main subjects of which may be described as follows.

Education. The project is aimed at the development of the open educational system on the basis of
educational games for children that can provide an entertaining introduction into the science about folklore;
educational programs on cultural anthropology for a wide audience;
special programs for a second undergraduate degree in folklore studies

The basic product of the project s educational part is a special voiced encyclopaedia. We propose to create a CD that would contain a vast variety of Russian folklore texts supplied with all kinds of audio- and photo-information on the subject, like, for example, records of different fieldwork interviews with deciphered texts, informants curriculum vitae and photos, etc. Also there s a possibility for creation of the original on-line karaoke program provided with a several access levels on the basis of the voiced encyclopaedia. Besides, inasmuch as nowadays there are no CDs containing this sort of information about folklore studies available, this product can also be adopted for ordinary academic purposes.
Within the framework of the project s educational part we also propose to start an open Internet-forum on our web-site. At the same time, inasmuch as our Center collaborates with many scholars and organizations not only in Russia but also in other countries, to make this collaboration more effective we propose to create a working group Internet-office. The members of the working group are our partners from Vologda region (Ethnographical museum in Lipin Bor and Belozersk Central Library) and from Darem University, England (Peter Ustinov Institute of Slavic studies). Our partners are ready to provide working places and lecture halls for discussion and approbation of supposed programs and academic courses.

Cultural and social heritage. The experience gained during many years of fieldwork has changed Russian scholars view of folklorist work. We began to understand that it consists not only in realization of fixed academic programs but also in maintaining and translating certain sacred cultural and social knowledge. Years of fieldwork have changed not only our ideas of the world of the traditional culture but also ourselves. And now we have a possibility to make an account of the character of these changes. Clearly, it is by way of joint investigation of our own national tradition that the reconstruction of a language common to people of different social groups and generations is made possible. Telling stories, old people not only translate symbols of the tradition but also contemplate over their complicated and intricate personal life experience. The complex character of present situation in Russia consists to a great extent in the fact that their experience is not called for by their relatives, by those who are close to them. People of older and younger generations live far away from each other; distances and borders create serious obstacles on the way of natural translation of real cultural values. That for young people this experience is very interesting and important thing is shown, in the first place, by the very practice of folklore expeditions. Doing fieldwork, communicating, among other things we get invaluable personal life experience, not mediated by any kind of ideological standards. In this view we consider as an important part of the project the attempt to reflect this side of Russian life and history through the personal views and feelings of people that are in the very heart of it. We intend to bind up a personal experience with a common knowledge in our virtual Museum of a cruel romance.
The name of the Museum is due to well-known XX century folklore genre. The gist of virtual museum exposition consists in demonstration of the deeper interconnection of our usual life scenarios with folklore subjects. The main parts of exposition are:

Museum of biographies. Russian province (the report I. S. Veselova); references on the voiced encyclopaedia
Private life areas (reports on different everyday speech and behavior stereotypes)

The final result of the educational, sociological and cultural elements proposed by Propp Center Internet-project is a supposed increase in number of qualified specialists in the traditional culture and folklore.