Przedmowa. Aby być regionalistą...

In the autumn of 2009 a project called "Me – Regionalist" came into being in the Department of Polish and European Ethnology in the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of Lodz University. It was brought to life by the need to define a regionalist in his own words. Almost a hundred traditional letters and over five hundred e-mails were sent with proposals to participate in the project and requests to spread the infor-mation about it among potentially interested people. They were addressed both to individual activists and various regional associations: scientific, cultural, artistic and historical ones as well as local museums, libraries, newspapers etc. The information was passed from one person or association to another and printed in some magazines. Various texts came in response because the appeal reached people defining regionalism in different ways. Among the authors there are people of different ages, experiences and interests. Most of their texts cannot be described as scien-tific. They have various forms, from essays to memoirs. To stress this diversity the collection was called "reflections, opinions, commentaries". All of them possess documentary value since they show various roots of the regionalist atti-tude. To some extent all of them contain autobiographical elements and may constitute the source of further analyses on the identity and ethos of a regionalist. While presenting their views and activities the authors described things which are dear to them. Their values centre around the culture of a region, the idea of social and educational work, family traditions and authorities such as the church. They often refer to books and even regional literature as a kind of value which constitutes an important source of inspiration. It can be clearly seen in many texts how important it is for a regionalist to be accepted by various local groups and associations. The work that we present to the readers seems to fill in the gap existing in the broad spectrum of works on regionalism. We felt there was a need to fill in this gap