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Gracia Santiago performs in Stevens Park, Finney County, Kansas,
1999, detail from poster. Photo courtesy of the Finney County
Convention and
Tourist Bureau. |
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Explore Your Community: A Community Heritage Poster for the Classroom
World Wide Web Resources for Cultural Heritage Research Projects
Explore Your Community Poster
Listed here are some online resources that will assist you in
doing cultural research in your community, arranged according to
the kinds of information they provide. (Unless otherwise noted,
links on this page connect to resources provided by organizations
other than the Library of Congress. The Library is not responsible
for information provided on other Web sites.)
Collecting Cultural Heritage Materials
- Folklife and
Fieldwork, by Peter Bartis (American Folklife Center,
Library of Congress). A booklet on how to do fieldwork in your
community (online and print versions available).
- "Fieldwork Basics," in Louisiana
Voices: An Educators' Guide to Exploring Our Communities and
Traditions.
- Preserving
Community/Cuentos del Varrio: An Oral History Instruction Manual, by
Jon Hunner, Daniel Villa, Pauline Staski, Jon Wall, and the
students at Panther Achievement Center (New Mexico State University,
Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Panther Achievement Center, Gadsden
High School, Anthony, New Mexico)
Preserving Cultural Heritage Materials
Cultural Heritage Curriculum Materials
Organizations
In addition to the American Folklife Center, the following national
organizations have resources to help educators develop folklife
education and folklife fieldwork projects with young people:
There are also numerous state and local arts agencies and folklife-in-education
initiatives across the country, many of which are listed in the Folklife
Sourcebook: A Directory of Folklife Resources in the United States.
(American Folklife Center, Library of Congress)
Examples of School-Based Cultural Heritage Projects
Arizona Heritage Project
The Arizona Heritage Project provides funding, resources, and training to allow high schools (grades 9 and higher) to develop opportunities for teachers and students to conduct oral histories with local residents.
- Bland
County History Archive
- Developed and maintained by students at Rocky Gap High School,
in Rocky Gap, Virginia, the Bland County History Archives contain
80 cemetery catalogs, 330 oral history interviews (both tapes
and transcripts), and 700 scanned photographs, plus maps and
other artifacts. The Archives began in 1993 as an optional project
in junior-year American history classes, with the goal of preserving
the unique stories of the area's Appalachian residents. Several
years later, educators took advantage of the opportunity to integrate
computer technology with the history curriculum, creating a local
history and technology class specifically to manage and organize
the Archives's Web site. The online content of the Archives continues
to grow, and in 1996 the site won "Best School Resource Site
in Virginia" from the Virginia Society for Technology in Education.
- Llano Grande Center for Research and Development
- Much of the history of South Texas is missing from conventional
textbooks, lying instead in oral folk tradition. As a result,
students and staff of the Llano
Grande Center for Research and Development, housed at Edcouch-Elsa
High School, are conducting and publishing interviews with residents
of this Rio Grande Valley border community. Equipped with a cassette
tape recorder and a still camera, students conduct the interviews
and later transcribe and edit them for publication in the Llano
Grande Journal, available in hard copy and online, in both English
and Spanish. Many area students now read the journal's oral histories
as literature assignments in their language arts classes.
- Montana Heritage Project
- Montana's state-wide project supports cultural heritage education
in its schools. The Web site provides curriculum materials, examples
of past projects, and information about publications and events
related to the project.
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