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Posted by: Nicole Saylor
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 …
Posted in: Archival Practice
Posted by: Nicole Saylor
The latest collection of oral histories and related documentation acquired by the American Folklife Center explores the significance and impact of wild horses, which remain deeply connected to the culture, economy and mythology of the West. Two companion collections include more than 1,000 images and more than 70 recorded interviews with those whose lives are impacted by the horses. Also …
Posted in: Oral History
Posted by: Nicole Saylor
During a recent trip to the University of Iowa at the invitation of the Digital Studio for Public Arts and Humanities, I took the opportunity to show off some of our recently digitized recordings made by folklorist Harry Oster (1923-2001), who was on the English faculty at Iowa for 30 years. The American Folklife Center …
Posted in: Folk Music, Folksong, Uncategorized
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 …
Posted in: Folk Music
Posted by: Nicole Saylor
The following is a guest post from Bertram Lyons, the digital assets manager and a folklife specialist at the American Folklife Center’s archives at the Library of Congress. This post originally appeared on the Association for Cultural Equity site and is reposted with permission. Prior to his arrival at the Library, Lyons was the archivist at the …
Posted in: Alan Lomax, Folk Music
Posted by: Nicole Saylor
This week we’re hosting three digital humanities scholars at the American Folklife Center to discuss potential research projects that would draw upon AFC collections. It got me thinking about digital humanities inquiry in developing and understanding the AFC Archives. Across our history, we have embraced new media, explored data- and metric-driven approaches to studying and computing …
Posted in: AFC Events, Archival Practice, Folk Music, Folksong