The Institute is the successor of the Ethnographic Institute with Museum (established 1949) and the Institute of Folklore (established 1973), united on July 1, 2010. IEFEM – BAS is the national center for ethnological, folklore, museological and cultural-anthropological research. It has rich libraries, and the National Archives and the National Center for Intangible Cultural Heritage at IEFEM - BAS are unique for the country and contain numerous archival materials (field audio, photo and video recordings, ethnographic diaries and descriptions, etc.).