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Posted by: Michelle Stefano
This is an announcement for a Friday, September 8th online discussion event focused on community-based cultural documentation and archival efforts, hosted by the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.
Posted in: AFC Events, Archival Practice, Fieldwork, Intangible Cultural Heritage
Posted by: Michelle Stefano
This post is a save-the-date announcement for the online discussion event, the Community-driven Archives: Local Needs/Global Practices in Safeguarding Living Cultural Heritage, bringing together panelists to discuss examples of community-guided documentation and archival preservation work from international perspectives. The event is hosted by the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, in collaboration with the American Folklore Society and the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore.
Posted in: AFC Events, Archival Practice, Fieldwork
Posted by: John Fenn
In October 2022, the American Folklife Center began a 4-month project performing mold remediation on paper and photographic materials for several collections. In order to reduce the burden on Conservation Division staff and increase AFC's ability to process collections more efficiently, the Center's archivists and technicians received training on how to treat mold so that those collections can be safely preserved and made available for research. By having AFC-trained staff do this work ourselves, collections can be made ready for researchers much sooner. This blog post presents the reflections of Serena Chiu and Carolina Restrepo on their training and work in mold remediation.
Posted in: Archival Practice
Posted by: Nicole Saylor
As 2022 draws to a close, we at the American Folklife Center want to take time to reflect on a year devoted to deepening our commitment to community-centered stewardship, adapting to hybrid work and planning for the future. The year was marked by the Library’s return to full onsite operations, leadership transitions, and moves to new public and staff spaces that make way for the transformation of the Jefferson Building. The year brought waves of change and staff rose to the challenge. Read about the year's highlights in this blog post from AFC's new director!
Posted in: AFC History, Archival Practice
Posted by: Todd Harvey
This guest post was authored by Marcia K. Segal, an archivist at the American Folklife Center who processed and authored the finding aid to the collection she describes below. Melville Herskovits, Alan Lomax, and Laura Boulton – three notable collectors, whose recordings of religious expression in Haiti are among the collections at the American Folklife …
Posted in: Archival Practice, Haiti
Posted by: Nicole Saylor
This is a guest post by archivist Maya Lerman, who completed processing on the John Cohen collection. Maya has written for the blog about her work on this collection previously, and another of our staff, Todd Harvey, offered a recollection of Cohen’s rich body of documentation upon his passing last year. Musician, visual artist, writer, …
Posted in: Archival Practice, Folk Music, John Cohen
Posted by: Nicole Saylor
This is a guest post by archivist Maya Lerman. We’re pleased to announce that the finding aid for the National Council for the Traditional Arts (NCTA) collection is now online. The collection includes broad documentation from the National Folk Festival, the Lowell Folk Festival, and other major cultural events. Its acquisition marks a significant expansion …
Posted in: Archival Practice, Folk Music
Posted by: John Fenn
In this guest post one of our archivists, Valda Morris, discusses the work she’s been doing behind the scenes to process an important collection and help create a finding aid that will assist researchers in discovering the richness of the materials. The American Folklife Center is proud to announce the availability of an online finding …
Posted in: Archival Practice, Dance
Posted by: Guha Shankar
As African American History Month concludes in 2020, the AFC is proud to announce the culmination of the Civil Rights History Project (CRHP) with the online release of the last batch of the 145 video interviews recorded with veteran activists for the collection. All the interviews are available on the Civil Rights History Project page, at …
Posted in: AFC Events, African American History, African Americans, Archival Practice, Black Panther Party, Chicano/a, Civil Rights, Civil Rights History Project, Freedom Struggle, Freedom Stuggle, Freedom Summer 1964, Narratives, Oral History, Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March, SNCC, Story Map, teachers, Teaching, Women's History