By the implementation of the project, our main objective was to help professionals from Slovak minority communities abroad improve their educational opportunities. One way to achieve this was by organizing educational events—lectures and workshops. We based this on the premise that Matej Bel University (UMB) and its specialized centre for Slovaks living abroad, together with the Centre for Research on the History and Culture of Lower Land Slovaks at the Department of History, Faculty of Arts, UMB, serve as expert guarantors unmatched in Slovakia, with more than 30 years of continuous professional activity. UMB also focused on identifying suitable project partners, who in turn were well positioned to assess the educational needs of their target groups and to carry out planned project outcomes—both educational events and the bibliographic database. We identified both areas as priorities for our target groups, and project activities across all partners confirmed this prioritization. Through these activities, the project contributed to improving the quality of education by introducing innovative methods, which subsequently strengthened the position and inclusion of minority participants in relation to the majority.
In the course of our workplace practice, we repeatedly identified the problem of a missing database of specialized literature. This was evidenced by recurring cases where experts from different fields addressed topics without knowing they had already been processed—and conversely, others were unable to identify verified, expert-approved texts and instead relied on unverified sources. The main goal of the proposed project was therefore to identify ways to establish an open online database of high-quality, verified professional bibliographic resources. We decided to develop this concept using the example of the history and culture of the Lower Land Slovaks, under the supervision of Prof. Miroslav Kmeť from the Department of History, Faculty of Arts, Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica. The Methodological Centre for Slovaks Living Abroad also ensured the project’s outreach to the appropriate target audience. The need for such a database was confirmed by experts across Slovakia, as well as representatives of the Office for Slovaks Living Abroad, whose website provides a direct link to the Centre’s materials under the section “Quick Access”: https://www.uszz.sk/.