The Komi media collection is an electronic reference information system based on an electronic archive of annotated recordings of Komi dialect texts in video and audio with translations into Russian and English which allows the user to search for linguistic units using different parameters.
The material in the archive is primarily based on recordings of the Iźva dialect of Komi, collected both in various archives and during fieldwork carried out in the framework of an international project entitled “Iźva Komi: Building an annotated digital corpus for future research on Komi speech communities in northernmost Russia”. The fieldwork was carried out in the Izhemsky and Sosnogorsk districts of the Komi Republic, the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, and in Murmansk Oblast. The primary goal of the project was to carry out sociolinguistic research in the territory inhabited by the Iźva Komi, comparative investigations on the local varieties of Iźva Komi, and to create of an electronic archive of annotated recordings in Komi with Russian and English translations. During four expeditions carried out between 2014 and 2016 a total of 196 speakers of Iźva Komi from various regions were interviewed during 157 sessions, ranging from 20 minutes to 1 hour. In addition, 16 recordings from old archives were remastered and made available to a wide range of users.
The project was made possible through the generous financial help of Kone Foundation (Finland) and the Foundation for Fundamental Linguistic Research (Russian Federation), and of the Ministry of National Politics of the Komi Republic in the framework of the special federal programme “Strengthening of Unity of the Russian Nation and Ethnocultural Development of the People of Russia (2014–2020).