Croatia's emigrant population and Croatian communities offer a colourful range of Croatian culture and this lexicon is a guide to enter into that section of Croatian culture, HMI director Marin Knezovic said presenting the lexicon.
The director of the Ivo Pilar Institute and the project's manager, Vlado Sakic, explained that 60 researchers worked on the lexicon for seven years with more than 600 associates after it had received support from the Croatian parliament. He added that the lexicon covers the past 120 years of communities that, he said, contributed 3% to Croatia's Gross Domestic Product.
The project's deputy manager, Ljiljana Dobrovsak, noted that the lexicon covers biographies of important people in Croatian emigration from the mid-19th century and the Croatian minority since the mid-16th century. It also notes various newspapers and magazines, organisations and institutions, she said.
Researcher Ivan Cizmic said, "Croatians are a nation of emigrants, which has been a continuing process since ancient times," adding that Croatian emigrants had given a large contribution to the countries they had settled in. He added that Croatians had continually lived with their people in the homeland and helped them achieve their aims.