Staff at the American Folklife Center continue to use new digital tools to support remote discovery and access for our resources by users of all kinds. Whether you are a community scholar, a teacher, an academic researcher, a creative artist, or a curious consumer of local culture we hope that our geographically-oriented research guides offer an entry point into the rich collections and resources maintained at the Center! Find the full menu Library of Congress Research Guides at this link.
In this post, we focus on the guides for U.S. Territories. The territories with currently available guides are American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The U.S. Territories are widely separate from each other, with distinct cultures and histories, each fascinating to explore.
Our research guides for each state and territory provide information about collections related to that state or territory—including links to those materials available online—as well as tips for searching the Library’s online catalog. In addition, we’ve gathered other AFC resources related to a given state, such as blog posts, podcast episodes, online finding aids, and webcasts of public programs. Here are some of the items you’ll find in the U.S. Territories guides:
The guide American Folklife Center Collections: American Samoa features a 2021 video of dance and song by Samoan Studies Institute Students Association for Fa’asamoa. There is also a link to an important collection of South Pacific music and culture: the Fahnestock South Sea collection, 1939-1994, which includes recordings of songs from American Samoa and some silent film footage of dance.
The guide to American Folklife Center Collections: Guam features Guam materials documented as part of the 2000 Local Legacies Project. The Bess Lomax Hawes Collection also includes Guam materials.
American Folklife Center Collections: Puerto Rico features Sidney Robertson Cowell’s recordings of Puerto Rican Songs performed by Aurora Calderon, Eleanor Rodriguez, and Cruz Losada in 193, available online as part of California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties as well as Puerto Rican culture documented as part of the American Folklife Center field project, the Chicago Ethnic Arts Project Collection.
American Folklife Center Collections: U.S. Virgin Islands includes a link to “Collection Spotlight: Children’s Songs from the Virgin Islands” in Folklife Today with recordings of children’s songs from the U.S. Virgin Islands. It also provides information to more collections that can be explored in the Folklife Reading Room.
As this brief introduction to these guides shows, there is a lot to learn from these guides whether you plan to browse the collection materials online or are planning a trip into the reading room. We hope that researcher, students, and folks who, perhaps just want to experience some folklore or folk music from a particular U.S. territory will find these new guides a good place to start.
Be sure to visit the Library of Congress Research Guides pages in order to discover the full spread of resources on offer! And, also know that American Folklife Center staff have generated (and continue to produce) guides focused on a wide range of topics. You can find the growing body of these rich and dynamic resources from the American Folklife Center here.