The database provisionally contains only the melodies originating from the Hungarian collections, but Romanian, Slovak, Serbian, Turkish and Arabic collections are also indicated in the list, however, without melodic search results. We are working constantly to complete our database. We will first add to it the smaller Turkish, Arabic, Serbian and Ruthenian materials.
Data collected by Bartók are published according to the date of collection and the locality indicated on the master sheets. To connect individual items to specific collection campaigns, it is necessary to consult several sources. In many cases, only the year of collection is known with certainty, not the month or day. In cases where Bartók collected from the same locality several times in the same year, it is not always possible to determine the month a particular collection item originated from. The detailed study of the field books, preserved in the Bartók Archives, helps to clarify the data, and the results are constantly being uploaded to the database. In some cases, further exploration is needed to determine whether Bartók actually visited the place indicated on the manuscript or the data actually refers to the origin of the informant. As for the material collected from soldiers in barracks, in most cases, only the place of the collection is known, and the origin of the informant can no longer be determined. Where both the place of collection and the origin of the informant could be clearly identified, both localities are shown in the left-hand menu, separated by a slash “/” sign. Further research is needed to explore the recordings made by several collectors and, in case Bartók was present, to include these occasions, typically studio recordings, into the database.