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Archive: 2018 (7 Posts)

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Folklife at the International Level: the Roots of Intangible Cultural Heritage Part III

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

This series of blog posts has turned to looking more closely at the roots of the ‘intangible cultural heritage’ (ICH) concept, laying a foundation for examining the global policy – and thereby framework – from which it draws its strength: the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of the United Nations …

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

Engaging Collections: AFC Chicago Ethnic Arts Collection Gathering

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

With 31 digitized AFC collections now online at loc.gov, AFC staff has long been thinking of ways to promote and enhance meaningful uses of them. In the past couple of years, these discussions have focused on the digitized, ethnographic survey collections, such as the Montana Folklife Survey, South Central Georgia Folklife Project, Rhode Island Folklife …

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

Folklife at the International Level: the Roots of Intangible Cultural Heritage Part II, with Valdimar Tr. Hafstein

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

In the last post, the Folklife at the International Level series took a turn into the world of “intangible cultural heritage” (ICH), a category of heritage on the global stage that developed decades ago, thanks to the joint efforts of WIPO and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). As noted, since the …

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

“The Gal Who Will Use the Recording Machine:” Insights into the Sarah P. Jamali Collection

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

This blog post is part of a series called “Hidden Folklorists,” which examines the folklore work of surprising people, including people better known for other pursuits. One of my favorite ways to explore our collections is to leaf through the folders of the correspondence file cabinets in our reading room, where I often come across …

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

Folklife at the International Level: The Roots of Intangible Cultural Heritage Part I

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

Exploring how legal measures, particularly intellectual property (IP) protections, can be used to safeguard living cultural traditions, practices, and expressions has been a longstanding aim of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), as discussed so far in this series. Yet, there exists another international organization that has for several decades taken on similar questions of …

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

Folklife at the International Level: Recent Developments in Protecting Traditional Cultural Expressions

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

  Yet another World Intellectual Property Day has arrived, and what better way to celebrate than to catch up with related developments on the folklife front? So far, this series has explored the international efforts of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in protecting traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) as intellectual property (IP) via IP protections. …

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

Caught My Eye: An AFC Treasure for Museology Nerds!

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

The delight of opening a folder in the AFC reading room and seeing this treasure has, unfortunately, blurred my memory of the exact path of inquiry that led me to it! If you are a museology and/or museum history nerd like me, I think you may understand.[1] To be precise, it is two treasures, and …