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Indiana
The American Folklife Center was created in 1976 by the U.S. Congress through Public Law 94-201 and charged to "preserve and present American folklife." The Center incorporates the Archive
of Folk Culture, which was established at the Library of Congress in 1928, and is now one of the largest collections of ethnographic material from the United States and around the world.
Collections
Indiana's folk culture is well represented in the collections of the American
Folklife Center. Among the Center's recordings are fiddle tunes and other
folk music; oral histories and storytelling about life in Indiana at the
turn of the century; the Indiana field recordings and notes by well-known
folklore collector Alan Lomax; Amish and French songs; and blues music
from Indianapolis.
- Indiana Collections in the Archive
of Folk Culture [full text]
Indiana participated in the Library's Bicentennial Local Legacies project,
which includes documentation of local traditions and celebrations for the
American Folklife Center's Archive of Folk Culture.
Field School
In the summer of 2000 an ethnographic field school was conducted in Bloomington
in co-operation with Indiana University's Folklore Institute. The student
researchers looked at the history, uses, and meaning of Bloomington's Courthouse
Square. To read more about this field school, read "Indiana Field School Explores Life 'On the Square,'" by David. A. Taylor, in Folklife Center News,
Fall 2000.
Exhibition
- 1984 "Generation to Generation: Sharing the Intangible,"
Purdue University, Calumet Library, Hammond.
Publications
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