[5] Work of Jakob Hurt resulted in a manuscript collection of 114 696 pages containing songs, proverbs, riddles, legends, folk tales and other folklore materials from various regions of Estonia, sent by more than 1400 collectors.

[6] After the death of Hurt his collection was transferred to the repository of the Finnish Literature Society in Helsinki as by that time there was no appropriate preservation condition in Estonia for such a material.

The Soviet Union occupied again Estonia in 1944 thus the Folklore Department belonged once again to the State Literary Museum, and collections were brought back to their former depositories.

Themes such as the struggle of social class depicted from the perspective of the working masses or life in collective farms were imposed as a reference to the modern thinking that promulgated the regime.

For example, Jakob Hurt was proclaimed a bourgeois researcher and the founder of archives Oskar Loorits was regarded as worthless and his name was erased from indexes and he was rarely mentioned in any new scholar works and publications.

In 2000 the Publication of the series Proceedings of the Estonian Folklore Archives (Eesti Rahvaluule Arhiivi Toimetused) was restored after the long break during the Soviet regime.

This lack of documentation by Estonian scholars was due to insufficient academic preparation and the high cost of fieldwork particularly among the more distant Finno-Ugric peoples.

In the sound collections of the EFA one can find also a considerable number of tape recordings of Mordvin folklore, made by Mikhail Tshuvashov and Viktor Danilov.

[11] The collecting campaign launched by Jakob Hurt including field research in Seto region was recognized by the Russian Geographical Society which subsidized his expeditions.

Later in the post-war period, one of the creative student collector Vera Voogla collected Russian folklore and deposited it in a separate archive that belonged to the University of Tartu.

[11] The Belarusian collection (ERA, Valgevene) contains 46 pages of manuscripts found by Paul Ariste in the abandoned flat of his teacher Peeter Arumaa [et], a Slavist scholar, who fled to the West during the WWII.

Data regarding these trends was collected primarily by Paul Ariste who focused his studies on Estonian and Swedish linguistic relations.

In 1927 Ariste visited Estonian Swedes for the first time for the purpose of research and folkloric documentation with an emphasis on linguistic data, such as language of communication used among families within specific villages.

University students of Jewish backgrounds (Elias Levenberg, Isidor Levin, Berta Kaplan, Sara Vilenski) recorded most of the material along with Estonian folklorist Paul Ariste.

The pupils of the Tartu Jewish school were encouraged to participate by their teachers of Sara Vilenski and Elias Levenberg, a former student of University Judaic studies.

[11] The Latvian collection (ERA, Läti) counts approximately 1500 pages, earliest part of which was gathered in border region of Valga in the end of 19 cent.

Further the collection was contributed by field records from Latvians of Estonia (Kaagvere region) and East Latvia, provided by volunteer Allina Verlis, folklorists Elmar Päss, Herbert Tampere, Isidor Levin and ubiquitous Paul Ariste.

The File Repository and Archival Information System Kivike (an acronym of the phrase Kirjandusmuuuseumi Virtuaalne Kelder or the Virtual Cellar of the Literary Museum) is a project that was started in 2010.

The contemporary entries additionally provide information regarding the context, time, place, gender, age and number of players as well as the region they were collected in and data on the collectors.

[3] Continuing a long lasting tradition, there is still an endeavour to cover by and large all the subjects and genres of the materials in the Archives through the efforts of researchers and archivists competent within their field.

Archives’ staff is currently doing research on various subjects, including such topics as ideologies and communities, runic songs, fairy tales, place lore, ethnomusicology, contemporary and children's folklore, and Estonians in Siberia.

The research will lead to results in scholarly and popular publications, open databases, and a modern science-based folklore archive functioning in the interests of society.

By the year 2020, thirteen regional volumes of Vana Kannel have been published - these editions cover runic songs from the parished of Põlva, Kolga-Jaani, Kuusalu, Karksi, Mustjala, Haljala, Kihnu, Jõhvi, Iisaku, Lüganuse, Paide, Anna, Kodavere, and Laiuse.

[27] Members of the runic songs research group are currently Andreas Kalkun, Helen Kõmmus, Aado Lintrop, Janika Oras, Ingrid Rüütel, Liina Saarlo, Mari Sarv and Taive Särg.

Seen as a rescue collection to preserve folklore in danger of being lost, the collectors amassed files of songs, beliefs and descriptions of customs, folk tales, and firsthand accounts of daily life.

Thousands of pages and tens of hours of audio and video recordings of folklore data from young people like graffiti, puzzles, proverbs, phrases, traditional tales, customs, games, and more are collected.

This unprecedented large corpus consisting of an array of different media files was so unusual in the history of the Folklore Archives that after preliminary description, more radical steps had to be taken.

[3] Monumenta Estoniae Antiquae is the series of fundamental publications compiled on the basis of the Estonian Folklore Archives' materials by the EFA in cooperation with other folkloristic institutions.

The collections of the Estonian Folklore Archives (Eesti Rahvaluule Arhiiv) are open to all for research purposes, with the exception of materials on which access limitations have been imposed.

member Jalmar Vabarna, among others, speaking out for the protection of folklore archives at a time when the government is perceived as more focused in granting support for scientific research and its direct economic benefits.