The text summarizes the nature and sense of informed consent in connection with ethnographic field research and deals with the conditions under which the informed consent isused and given (signed by a respondent). Based on a survey among the members of the Czech Ethnologic Society, the author formulates theses summarizing the positive and negative experience with the use of informed consent within the ethnological research. She critically contemplates over the fact that researches use the resources from the past as a matter of course, notifying that some researchers are not aware of, when drafting the research and its procession, that the information they obtain can serve to somebody else, in another period and to explain other question that those followed by them.