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Thai dancers on-stage at the Library of Congress.
(l to r) Suteera Nagavajara, Warin Tepayayone, and Chalom Strope of the Somapa Thai Dance Company and Orchestra, who performed as part of the American Folklife Center's Homegrown Concert Series in 2024. Photograph taken by Steve Winick on May 23, 2024.

The American Folklife Center: 2024 Year in Review

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As a new year begins, I want to take a moment to reflect on the American Folklife Center’s work in 2024. Whether meeting community documentarians in New Orleans or do-si-doing in the Library’s Great Hall during a family-themed celebration of folk music, we spent the year engaging with amazing people who do the hard work of building and sustaining community culture. Our job at the Center is to document and share the many expressions of human experience to inspire, revitalize, and perpetuate living cultural traditions. Staff meet this mission by regularly contributing to high-profile Library special initiatives while also tending to the day-to-day demands of building and stewarding the collections, and engaging a broad public through programs, digital resources, onsite reference services, collection displays, and dynamic collaborations with external partners.

A woman weaver seated at her warping board for preparing the threads.
Sammy Ilamliyong and her warping board, 2023. Photo by Modesta L. Tauwl. Part of the Warp and Weft of Yap’s Outer Islands: Backstrap Weaving in Micronesia: Community Collections Grant Project, 2022-2023 (AFC 2022/011).

This year, we gave out the third and final 10 awards for the Community Collections Grant (CCG) program, part of the Library’s Mellon Foundation-funded Of the People: Widening the Path initiative. These funds enabled dozens of community teams to document their own histories and traditions. Interviews, photographs, and audiovisual documentation were added to the AFC archives, expanding the cultural and historic record. The first collection went online (Warp and Weft of Yap’s Outer Islands: Backstrap Weaving in Micronesia) and awardees are now submitting files via a new Digital Submission Portal. In March, we hosted a rare offsite Board meeting in New Orleans, where Trustees talked directly with more than a dozen tradition-bearers from Congo Square in New Orleans to the bayou community of Thibodaux, many of whom were recipients of CCG awards.

The Backstreet Cultural Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana–just one of the many stops AFC board members and staff made during the March board meeting. Photo taken on March 13, 2024, by Meg Nicholas.

In June, the Library hosted a week of celebrations to mark the opening of the new David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery. AFC Board member Natalie Merchant, singer, songwriter and folklife advocate, spent the week in residency at the Library doing research, performing a special Thursday night concert featuring children’s music she culled from the AFC Archives, and leading a sing-along of songs from the Archives during the Library’s Family Day. We contributed to the more than 120 items featured in the initial rotation of “Collecting Memories” in the new Gallery, and staff assisted with item selection and served as opening week Gallery greeters.

A woman sings into a microphone with her hand up.
Natalie Merchant performs in the Coolidge Auditorium, June 13, 2024. Photo by Stephen Winick for the Library of Congress.

In September, the first COVID-19 American History Project digital collection went online. Pandemic Stories from New Orleans-Area Service and Hospitality Workers features interviews with hospitality professionals including hotel workers, tour guides, bartenders, street musicians, and many others, providing lucid details of working-class New Orleanians’ lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. Two more collections are expected to go online in 2025. Meanwhile, Americans are invited to share COVID-19 stories via the Archive Activation website and discover first-person accounts of the pandemic via the COVID-19 Research Guide.

Two interviewers with interviewee, standing in the streets of New Orleans.
Sara Bernstein (left) and Elise Chatelain (right) of Dismantle Media and Culture Alliance with New Orleans resident Zelda Parquet (center) in late 2023. Dismantle conducted interviews with twenty workers in New Orleans’ tourism and hospitality industry as part of the COVID-19 American History Project. Photo by Justin Thomas Micaroni.

We were excited to launch online the digital collection of more than 125,000 panel maker files from the AIDS Memorial Quilt Records in time for World AIDS Day on December 1, 2024!

Last fiscal year, the Archives team cleared more than 237,770 items from its backlog, helping develop a new platform for receiving digital collections, and digitally preserving over 950 analog audio recordings to continue the focus on comprehensive digitization of audiovisual materials. Also, eight new Occupational Folklife Project collections were released along with the Robert Winslow Gordon Songsters collection. Staff publishing new and substantially updated collection finding aids, include the Diane Wolkstein collection, the Margarita Mazo Old Believer and Molokan collection, the Neil Rosenberg bluegrass music collection, and the Robert Winslow Gordon papers. Important progress was made on major acquisitions. The final accruals of the Reginald Jackson and Martin Koenig collections were accessioned, and accruals were made to the Kitchen Sisters and Martha Cooper collections.

Three women standing together, half-length portrait
Dr. Lucille Rayford, Gevona Lawton, and Carmen L. Vaughn-Hewitt are nurses and sorors of the Chi Eta Phi sorority. Their collection was the 50th Occupational Folklife Project collection to go online for the American Folklife Center.

AFC connected the Library to hundreds of thousands of people through its popular blog, podcasts, online film series, public events, and virtual and in-person research services. During the previous fiscal year, AFC staff registered 1,190 direct reference interactions, circulated 4,797 items to patrons, produced eight new Research Guides, created 19 podcast episodes, and published 114 blog posts for Folklife Today.

We saw a 25-percent increase in events and attendees over the last fiscal year, reaching more than 6,000 audience members across 50 events that provided the public with direct access to culture bearers, collection items, and staff subject matter expertise. Twenty-three events were archived as webcasts. The increase in events and attendees stems from two factors: more accurate reporting and a collaborative agreement with the National Philharmonic that paired AFC staff presentations and collection displays with concerts throughout the organization’s 2024 and 2025 seasons.

Woman stands on stage of auditorium speaking to crowd with a hand held microphone.
Melanie Zeck, a reference librarian at the American Folklife Center, demonstrates the juba rhythm to a packed house at a National Philharmonic concert. Photograph by Elman Studio, used with permission of National Philharmonic.

The generosity of private donors enabled new and expanded opportunities for artists and aspiring cultural workers. AFC launched an Artist in Resonance Fellowship, which provides funding to artists creating new musical works inspired by AFC archival collections. The fellowship was awarded to Mark Bilyeu and Cindy Woolf of the musical duo, The Creek Rocks. The award was made possible by a generous donation from the late Mike Rivers, a musician and local recording studio owner. The duo is working with songs collected by Sidney Robertson Cowell while in the Ozarks in 1936 and 1937. Four Archie Green Fellowships went to applicants to document occupational folklife of women ranchers in Colorado, library workers in Wisconsin, beekeepers across the West, and professional body piercers in the DMV. The Center made two awards from the Gerald E. and Corinne L. Parsons Fund enabling research into women singers in recordings made at Parchman Farm by Library staff in the late 1930s and documentation of traditions in Black communities in coal mining and tobacco farming regions across Virginia and West Virginia.

A woman plays banjo and a man plays guitar
Cindy Woolf and Mark Bilyeu perform “Lavender Blue” on the John Cohen Banjo and the Burl Ives Guitar in the Folklife Reading Room on the first day of their fellowship research. Photo by Stephen Winick.

A second donation from the estate of Peter Bartis, a former AFC staff member, furthers the Division’s Internship Fund, which from 2018-2024 has supported 12 interns. The impacts of his gifts are detailed in a recent blog post. Last summer we hosted three interns, two through the Folklife Internship program and one who earned college credit through Utah State University.

Our staff grew in 2024 with four new hires. In May, Sabine Lipten was hired as a project archivist for the Community Collections Grant initiative. In September, Shaunette Payne became AFC’s administrative officer and Dr. Andrea Decker began as a new Reference Specialist. Prior to earning a full-time position, Andrea held a position at AFC as a 2023 Librarian in Residence. In December, AFC hired Samantha (Sam) Ruggirello as an archivist to assist processing for the COVID-19 American History Project and other collections.

It was a busy and productive year. I am grateful to our staff for their dedication and hard work, and to all the people who donated their collections, used our reading room, attended our events, and shared their traditions and expertise with us. Onward into 2025!

Comments (3)

  1. An excellent year and so many deep. community touches. That is the work. Thanks to all at AFC.

  2. Very interesting and informative. thank you all for your excellent work

  3. A banner year! So much accomplished and groundwork laid for the future! Brava!

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