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 is available for download at http://id.loc.gov/download/.
The AFS Ethnographic Thesaurus is a vocabulary that can be used to improve access to information about folklore, ethnomusicology, ethnology, and related fields. The American Folklore Society developed the AFSET in cooperation with the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress, supported by the Scholarly Communications Program of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Linked Open Data offers the presentation of structured information in a freely available environment, linked to other sources of similar information in a way that enhances discovery and communication. On the Library of Congress Linked Data Service platform, the AFSET joins the Library of Congress Subject Headings, the Thesaurus of Graphic Materials, and a variety of other vocabularies.
The Ethnographic Thesaurus will also continue to be available from the Open Folklore, a portal designed to encourage access to scholarly communication across folklore and other ethnographic disciplines. Open Folklore is joint project of Indiana University and American Folklife Society.
Your feedback is valuable and encouraged! A thesaurus is a living vocabulary, constantly changing, and we are eager for your feedback. Please send comments on subject terms in the AFSET using the online form at http://openfolklore.org/et/contact.htm, preferably with references supporting their definition and use.
Comments
Thank you, Catherine, for this invaluable work and very helpful blog post providing access to this tremendous resource. I think I speak for many in the field of folklore and folklife when I say that we are extremely grateful to have this available and we will be using it!
~pat