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Posted by: Nicole Saylor
This is a guest blog post by Todd Harvey, a Reference Librarian and curator of the Lomax collections at the American Folklife Center. The American Folklife Center announces long-awaited digital access to a tranche of Lomax family correspondence. It follows similar treatment for the Bess Lomax Hawes collection and the Alan Lomax collection. Most of …
Posted in: Alan Lomax, John Lomax
Posted by: Stephanie Hall
Although the Library of Congress is temporarily closed to the public and staff are, as possible, working from home, the work of the Library continues. It is heartening to see that one of the most labor intensive areas of work, putting archival collections online, continues in spite of the precautions against the COVID-19 pandemic. The …
Posted in: Alan Lomax, Bess Lomax Hawes, Women's History
Posted by: Nicole Saylor
This is a guest post by reference librarian Todd Harvey, who curates the Lomax family papers at the American Folklife Center. Today, the American Folklife Center announces the launch of the Bess Lomax Hawes (1921-2009) digital collection, now available at this link. A scholar, teacher, performer, writer, and filmmaker, Bess established and stewarded the Folk …
Posted in: Acquisitions, Bess Lomax Hawes
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Episode seventeen of the Folklife Today Podcast (or Season 2, Episode 5) is ready for listening! In the episode, John Fenn and Stephen Winick talk about a campaign called "The Man Who Recorded the World: On The Road with Alan Lomax." It's an effort to crowdsource transcriptions Alan Lomax's fascinating field notes. Through this campaign, you can help out the Library of Congress and music fans worldwide by increasing access to Lomax's field notes through transcribing and reviewing pages. Anyone can get involved at the link provided in the blog. The podcast and blog feature music from throughout Lomax's career as well as descriptions of his notes.
Posted in: Alan Lomax, Podcasts, Podcasts with Archive Challenge Content
Posted by: John Fenn
This guest post from Todd Harvey, AFC reference staff member and Alan Lomax collection curator, is part of a short series related to the Library’s crowdsource platform and the campaign we helped launch in September 2019 focused on the extensive holdings AFC has of Lomax manuscript materials. The American Folklife Center wishes a happy birthday …
Posted in: Alan Lomax, Uncategorized
Posted by: Stephanie Hall
When I was writing my blog on “Great Lakes Ships and Shipping” in 2018, I naturally wanted to look at the field notes Alan Lomax wrote when he was collecting these songs. But this was no easy task. His field notes were online, but only as page image scans. The notes were handwritten and they …
Posted in: Alan Lomax
Posted by: John Fenn
At the start of this month we announced a “challenge” for the Lomax crowdsourcing campaign on the Library’s By the People platform. To refresh your memory, the campaign is focused on transcribing about 9000 pages of handwritten and typed Alan Lomax manuscripts. The ultimate goal is to create machine-readable electronic text versions of Lomax’s materials so …
Posted in: Alan Lomax
Posted by: John Fenn
Back in September, the American Folklife Center helped launch a crowdsourcing campaign focused on transcribing about 9000 pages of handwritten and typed Alan Lomax manuscripts. This campaign is running on By the People, the crowdsourcing platform developed by the Library of Congress. The ultimate goal is to create machine-readable electronic text versions of Lomax’s materials …
Posted in: Alan Lomax
Posted by: Stephen Winick
In his book The Folk Songs of North America, in an introduction to one of the American Folklife Center's finest songs about the Devil, Alan Lomax wrote: Early America saw the Devil as a real and living personage. Rocks in New England were scarred by his hoofprints, as he carried off maidens, screaming and howling, over the hills, or came after the men who had sold their souls to him in return for money or success. […] A mountain woman tells of the last moments of her mean old husband…’I knowed he war goin’, because all the dogs from fur and nigh come around and howled. Hit wur a dark night. But plain as day, comin’ down yon side the mountain, through the bresh so thickety a butcher knife couldn’t cut hit, I seen the Devil a-comin’. He war ridin’ a coal-black cart, drivin’ a coal-black oxen. The cart come down to the door and stopped. When it come, it come empty. But when it went away, hit had a big black ball in it that war Arzy’s soul. […] Lomax's passage serves as a fine and atmospheric introduction to our own Halloween exploration of the Devil in folksongs from the American Folklife Center archive!
Posted in: Cowboy and Western Music, Folksong, Halloween, Halloween Songs