This is a guest post by American Folklife Center Folklife Specialist Catherine H. Kerst, a subject cataloger who has led the project since it was established. The American Folklife Center is delighted to announce that the American Folklore Society Ethnographic Thesaurus (AFSET) has been released through the Library of Congress Linked Data Service at http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/ethnographicTerms.The thesaurus …
June is National Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Awareness Month. I am glad. Not because so many military veterans are living with the disorder or suffering because they are afraid to seek treatment. I am glad because now people can increase their awareness of PTSD, satisfy their curiosity, ease their fears and easily seek help if …
Ever since the Civil Rights History Project Act was passed in 2009, archivists at the American Folklife Center have kept their eyes and ears open for items related to the Southern Freedom Movement as they process collections. Todd Harvey, curator of the Alan Lomax Collection (AFC 2004/004), recently noticed a folder of twenty-one photographs in …
Caribbean American Heritage Month is a relatively new commemorative month, first created in June, 2006. The American Folklife Center has many collections that document aspects of Caribbean cultures and some of these are available online. This essay can only touch on a few examples, but I hope it will provide ideas on how to explore …
The following is a guest post from Todd Harvey, the curator of the Alan Lomax Collection at the American Folklife Center archives, Library of Congress. The American Folklife Center is delighted to announce donation of the Bess Lomax Hawes Collection (AFC 2014/008) to the Center’s archive. The collection contains manuscripts, sound recordings, photographs, and moving …
June eighth is World Oceans Day, and an opportunity to look at a few examples of folksongs that relate to the interconnection between humans and the sea from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. In this recording, available via the link, James H. Gibbs of Nantucket, Massachusetts sings an untitled song about sperm whaling, …
Seventy years after D-Day, it may feel like the events of June 6, 1944, are well-covered territory. That’s how it has felt at times to me, at least. Between depictions of the Normandy invasion in movies and miniseries such as Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, and popular histories such as those written …
The American Folklife Center has a small but respectable collection of 419 Scam emails. It even includes a parody scam letter from February 2003 claiming to be authored by none other than George W. Bush, who asks recipients to transfer 10 to 25 percent of their yearly incomes to aid in removing the Iraqi president from …
