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Archive: 2014 (111 Posts)

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

Narratives of Women and Girls: the Center for Applied Linguistics Collection

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

For Women’s History Month, I thought it would be interesting to highlight some examples of interviews with women and girls in American English Dialects: The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection. This online collection is one of several dialect collections in the American Folklife Center archive. With a little digging, such collections can yield exciting examples of …

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

Collection highlight: Wisconsin recordings from the 1940s

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

Helene Stratman-Thomas (1896–1973) emerges from this cavalcade of (Wisconsin folk music) scholarship as neither the first, nor the most persistent, nor the most prolific, nor the most expert collector of Wisconsin’s musical folklore, but she is, and perhaps always will be, the most significant. — James Leary, The Wisconsin Patchwork: A Companion to the Radio …

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

Celebrating Women’s History: Still Standing – The Story of Tammy Duckworth

Posted by: Megan Harris

The following is a guest post by Lisa A. Taylor, liaison specialist with the Veterans History Project. A version of this blog post ran on the Library of Congress Blog on March 13th. Disabled combat hero, veterans’ advocate, politician, woman. U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) is many things, most strikingly, a person who has not …

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

Highlighting Ozark Collections for a Distinguished Guest

Posted by: Stephen Winick

This week, I had the distinct honor and pleasure of highlighting the American Folklife Center’s Ozark Mountain collections, especially those from the state of Missouri, in a lecture and audio-visual presentation in the Library’s Whittall Pavilion. It was a great opportunity to share our collections with an audience of interested folks who all have firsthand …

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

Preserving America’s Voices: Who’s Listening?

Posted by: Stephen Winick

Note: This blog post is reprinted from Library of Congress Magazine, for which it was written by Stephen Winick and edited by Audrey Fischer.  The full issue contains two more articles about the American Folklife Center’s oral-history collections.  You can download it here. Preserving America’s Voices: Who’s Listening? How Can We Use Oral-History Collections to …

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

Serving the Armed Forces: The USO

Posted by: Megan Harris

The following is a guest post by Rachel Telford, Program Specialist for the Veterans History Project. Founded 73 years ago this month, the United Service Organizations (USO) was created at the request of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide entertainment and recreation to members of the military. Six civilian service organizations – the Salvation Army, …

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

John Wesley Work III: Documenting Musical Change

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

Folklorist John Wesley Work III lived in an extraordinary time in the development of African American music. He was in college as the Harlem Renaissance began. African American composers were developing traditional blues into elite compositions and the piano became an instrument for new styles such as jazz and boogie-woogie. Work, like his brother Julian, …