The presentation of the electronic edition of the Croatian Emigrant and Minority Communities Lexicon was staged on the 6th of October at the multimedia Matis Club of the Croatian Heritage Foundation’s Zagreb headquarters.
This publication is the fruit of collaboration between the Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences and client the Croatian Heritage Foundation. Work on this project, which included the participation of numerous Croatian and international researchers and experts in field of migration and emigration, including experts from the Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography and the National and University Library in Zagreb, commenced in 2007. The cover art features prominent Australian-Croatian painter Charles Bilich’s Historica Croatica.
On hand at the presentation to speak about the lexicon were Croatian Heritage Foundation director Marin Knezović MSc, Ivo Pilar Institute director and project head Prof. Vlado Šakić DSc, project deputy head Ljiljana Dobrovšak DSc, Ivan Čizmić DSc, Marin Sopta DSc, Tomislav Markić DSc and Ivan Rogić DSc. The presentation, which gathered numerous eminent guests, media representatives and project associates, was brilliantly moderated by Vesna Kukavica, the head of the Croatian Heritage Foundation publishing department.
Over 5,900 entries were prepared for the publication of the online version of the lexicon and its concept and the organisation of work on the project is foreseen as a two phase undertaking. The first phase covers the Croatian emigrant communities and the second on Croatian minority communities abroad. An alphabetical base of entries was first established on the basis of relevant material and literature from which the Lexicographic Institute and Ivo Pilar Institute experts could establish a database. The database allowed for the entry of a very comprehensive set of information that can be very simply and systematically collected, searched and used in work based on various criteria. The entries are divided into several groups, with the main division being between the emigrant communities and the Croatian minority communities, while the online versions are arranged alphabetically. The most important and numerous group of entries is comprised of the biographies of major figures that were and continue to be active in Croatia and abroad. The subsequent division is based on countries, then by terminological associations linked to emigration, immigration, major events in the history of our emigrant communities, newspapers and magazines published in the emigrant communities, the organisations and institutions of the emigrant and minority communities and the division of collective entries (e.g. Croatians in Hungary). This division was required to ensure that some information did not end up not included in the lexicon.
The lexicon’s database currently includes some 12,500 entries – 2,900 pertain to the minority communities, 9,000 to the emigrant communities and the remainder to terms, places and events. This is not, however, a final figure, as it is daily supplemented with new data through the gathering of information and new insights. Given that not all of the entries can be included in the print edition of the lexicon, it should be noted that they are in the database and that they will be used in the future in producing a Croatian Emigrant and Minority Communities Encyclopaedia or separate lexicons.
The Croatian Heritage Foundation and the Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences announce the online edition of the Croatian Emigrant and Minority Communities Lexicon as the base for a print edition. Observations, corrections and suggestions may be submitted up to the end of 2015 to: leksikon@pilar.hr.
Text by: Diana Šimurina Šoufek; Photos by: Snježana Radoš
