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Posted by: John Fenn
This guest post comes from Todd Harvey, a Reference Specialist and the curator of Lomax collections at the American Folklife Center. To the Librarian of Congress March 21, 1940 Alan Lomax has in Washington with him today and tomorrow a folk singer for whose excellence he vouchers. This singer, Woodie Guthrie by name, is willing …
Posted in: AFC History, Alan Lomax, John Lomax
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: 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: John Fenn
Ascensión Mazuela-Anguita is the current scholar in the Jon B. Lovelace Fellowship for the Study of the Alan Lomax Collection, and has been using her time at the Library of Congress to explore materials held at the AFC related to Lomax’s 1952–53 field recording trip to Spain. In this recent guest post on the Kluge …
Posted in: Alan Lomax, Folk Music
Posted by: John Fenn
On Wednesday, February 7, the American Folklife Center will be co-hosting an event that explores some of the science and perspectives on longevity, working with our colleagues in the Library’s Health Services Division and an external partner, the Longevity Science Foundation. A panel will discuss issues informing work on longevity, including ethics, neural health, and …
Posted in: AFC Events
Posted by: John Fenn
This guest post is from Doug Peach, a Folklife Specialist here at the Library of Congress. In it he describes materials that the Center has drawn on recently for two collection displays focused on sports and community. Introduction The American Folklife Center is, perhaps, best known for its collections of music and storytelling—and for good …
Posted in: AFC Events, AFC History, Native American History
Posted by: John Fenn
This guest post is by Sarah Elizabeth Tomlinson, a Ph.D. candidate in Musicology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At their school’s annual Christmas performance, forty kindergarten and first-grade students in Durham, North Carolina bounced and sang along with the Library of Congress. Specifically, they performed for an audience of family and …
Posted in: Folk Music
Posted by: John Fenn
A little over a decade ago, Brooklyn-based musician and promoter, Eli Smith, merged his passion for folk music with the inspiration he got from the community of artists calling New York City home and created the Brooklyn Folk Festival. Along the ten-year journey of the Festival, Eli has engaged the American Folklife Center in numerous …
Posted in: Folk Music, John Cohen, Old Time Music