THE MISSION

The mission of the Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography is based especially in the modern function of encyclopaedic lexicography, which through systematising, synthesising, indexing, storing and distributing information and knowledge gives the opportunity for a reliable approach to global knowledge, enables a systemic orientation within the ever-increasing number of information, thus strengthening the possibility for a wide and creative involvement of the user in scientific, research and educational processes.

Within the process of globalisation, in so much as it neglects or suppresses certain social and cultural identities, the mission of the Institute is also to develop, know and understand Croatian natural and historic heritage, as well as the cultural, scientific, political and wider social community in its interfusion with the universal experience and knowledge. Projects of the Institute of Lexicography are developed as vital contributions to the emergence and continuation of the modern Croatian cultural identity and scientific standard, often with a normative function in expert, terminological and methodological development of specific scientific and expert research, but also in the glossary used by the general public.

In accordance with such general and specific ideas and executions, the mission of the Institute especially encompasses determining general lexicographic-encyclopaedic standards, working on the standardisation of scientific and expert terminology, developing large general encyclopaedias that connect Croatian themes with universal ones, presenting the Croatian component and integrating it into the global scientific and cultural material in Croatian and other languages, developing projects about as of yet lexicographically unresearched themes in order to get to know different areas of science and art better, and working on digitally connecting lexicographically processed material into a unique system of mutually connected units that complement each other online in the width and the depth of global knowledge.

The vision of the Miroslav Krleža Institute of lexicography from 2015 to 2020 is to:

• upgrade online systems of general and specialised encyclopaedics for the development of public knowledge with a high scientific relevance and create a unique publicly available digital repository of lexicographic content

• update the national material with analytical and synthetic articles about the most important persons and terms

• continue to work with the scientific community in developing lexicographic projects and  organising scientific conferences as a support to the development of certain scientific disciplines and themes

• popularise the results of scientific research by publishing parts of lexicographically treated material of the Institute's projects online

• support the involvement of the Institute's employees in scientific work, especially in  advancing public knowledge and its lexicographic treatment, and educational work outside the Institute

• improve the international profile, especially through cooperation with similar European institutions, and initiate an online linking of European general encyclopaedias, especially those of »small« nations (languages)

• develop recognizability of the Croatian national heritage by updating and expanding online lexicographic content in foreign languages

The Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography is the Croatian central lexicographic institution. It was established on October 5, 1950 following the incentive of the writer and erudite Miroslav Krleža. Since then, all through to the present, the editions of the Institute of Lexicography are an important contribution to the maintenance and development of the Croatian cultural standard. Encyclopaedias, atlases, dictionaries, lexicons and bibliographies of the Institute of Lexicography are traditionally reliable and explain in a distinguishing manner facts relating to the Croatian heritage and social reality.

The basic activity of the Institute is acquisition, processing and verifying data that, accompanied by fundamental research (with a view to developing scientific-vocational basis) are used as data base for the creation of various editions. Additional activities of the Institute refer to the scientific improvement in cooperation with university institutions, exchange of lexicographically verified data with related foreign institutions and establishment of common lexicographic-encyclopaedic standards.
In the course of its sixty-year-long activity, the Institute of Lexicography published more than 250 different encyclopaedias, dictionaries, lexicons and other publications. The fundamental editions of the Institute of Lexicography are the multivolume Croatian Encyclopaedia and the Croatian Biographical Lexicon. Recently, the emphasis is directed at the one-volume editions that endeavour to respond to current cultural and social requirements.