Top of page

Archive: 2014 (15 Posts)

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Folklorists partner with archives to create ‘living archives’ of folk arts documentation

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

In April, Maryland Traditions, a program of the Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC), transferred its archives to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Sustainability of folklore fieldwork collections is a pressing issue for many state folk arts agencies throughout the United States. I recently had the opportunity to talk with state folklorist Clifford Murphy about …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Creepypastas, Memes, Lolspeak & Boards: The Scope of a Digital Culture Web Archive

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

The following is a guest post from Trevor Owens, Digital Archivist in the Office of Strategic Initiatives. Trevor has been consulting with the American Folklife Center on born-digital collection development initiatives. I have recently had the pleasure of helping to develop and curate the American Folklife Center’s digital culture web archive. Nicki Saylor announced this …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Dance Heritage Coalition Intern Helps Expand Access to Lomax Choreometrics Materials

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

This is a guest post from Lotus Norton-Wisla, an intern at the American Folklife Center working to improve access to materials in the Alan Lomax Collection related to choreometrics, which was Lomax’s methodology for studying dance performance style. These materials consist of more than 70 boxes of paper materials and more than 3,500 film elements. …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Collaborative archiving Out West: aspirations, frustrations, celebrations

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

This is a guest post from John Vallier, Head, Distributed Media at the University of Washington Libraries. His post is based on a presentation he made at an American Folklife Center symposium held at the Library of Congress last fall. This past September I had the pleasure of participating in the American Folklife Center’s Cultural Heritage Archives …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

It’s Never too Late to be an Ethnomusicologist: A Conversation with AFC Intern Kirk Sullivan, Part II

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

This is a guest post by Folklife Specialist Ann Hoog, who coordinates AFC’s internship program. This is the second in a two-part series stemming from a conversation with one of our summer interns, Kirk Sullivan. Part I was about how he went from having an established career in software engineering to becoming a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology. Today, …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

It’s Never too Late to be an Ethnomusicologist: A Conversation with AFC Intern Kirk Sullivan

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

This is a guest post by Folklife Specialist Ann Hoog, who coordinates AFC’s internship program. This is the first in a two-part series stemming from a conversation with one of our summer interns, Kirk Sullivan. Part II is available at this link. This week I sat down to talk with one of our summer interns, Kirk Sullivan, …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Interview Series Explores Folk Culture in the Digital Age

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

Folklorist Trevor J. Blank is an assistant professor of communication at the State University of New York at Potsdam. Readers of Folklife Today might enjoy a series of posts on the Library of Congress’s digital preservation blog, The Signal. In a two-part Insights Interview series, folklorist Trevor J. Blank talks about digital culture on the …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

AFS Ethnographic Thesaurus now available as linked data

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

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 …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

AFC acquires the papers of folk arts pioneer Bess Lomax Hawes

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

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 …