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American Folklife Center Annual Report for 2003
Peggy A. Bulger,
Director
Board of Trustees
New American Folklife Center board members this year include Marlene
Meyerson, from New Mexico, appointed by Congress; Kojo Nnamdi, from
Washington, D.C., appointed by the Librarian; and Tom Bowman, from
the Department of Veterans Affairs, appointed by President Bush. Among
board activities this year was the completion of a Governance Policy
Statement outlining board procedures for working with the AFC director
and staff. The board met, January 23-24 and May 21-22, at the Library
of Congress, and on September 24-26 at the Vermont Folklife Center
in Middlebury, Vermont. The itinerary for the fall meeting included
a visit to the studios of several granite carvers, in Barre, Vermont;
a tour of a nearby cemetery, where their works were in place; a presentation
at the home of Russell Snow of four Vermont folk artists; and an evening
visit to the Shelburne Museum, south of Burlington.
Public Programs
The Archive of Folk Culture: Seventy-fifth Anniversary Year. The Archive
of American Folk-Song, now the Archive of Folk Culture in the American
Folklife Center (AFC) was founded in the Library of Congress seventy-five
years ago, July 1, 1928. The Folk Archive was the brainchild of Carl
Engel, head of the Music Division, and the Archive's first head,
Robert W. Gordon. The AFC was engaged in a number of events and activities
commemorating the event, including regular notice in Folklife Center
News and at public programs throughout the year; a special concert
by Odetta (November 13, 2003); the creation of an "Illustrated
Guide to the American Folklife Center," with accompanying compact
disc of sound recordings from the Archive selected by the reference
staff (forthcoming, 2004); several panel sessions at the American Folklore
Society meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico; and an open house planned
for December 2003.
Concerts and Other Public Events
October 7: English folklorist Georgina Boyes delivered a lecture entitled "Leading
the Field: James Madison Carpenter and Maud Karpeles, Pioneering Collectors
of Folklore in England and North America."
October 8: The New Hampshire contradance group "Old New England," with
2002 National Heritage Fellow Bob McQuillen and contradance caller
Mary DesRosiers.
October 9: Folklife specialist Ann Hoog gave a "Gallery Talk" on
the AFC collection material gathered in connection with September 11,
2001.
October 12: At the second annual National Book Festival, the AFC produced
a Storytelling Pavilion with performers: Antonia Sacre, the Georgia
Sea Island Singers, Chuna McIntyre, Peter Cook, Cambodian American
Heritage dance troupe, Waddie Mitchell, Roslyn Bresnick-Perry, Tom
Weakley, and the Deaf performance group the Wild Zappers. In addition,
the Veterans History Project sponsored an information table in the
Library's Pavilion, and Peggy Bulger interviewed retired congressman
Sam Gibbons about his war-time experiences.
November 6: Anthony McCann, postdoctoral research fellow at the Smithsonian
Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, presented a lecture entitled "Beyond
the Commons: Intellectual Property and the Masks of Disclosure."
November 7: Pinetop Perkins (originally from Mississippi) was featured
in a concert by the Bob Margolin Band, from Chicago, Illinois.
November 13: The Cellicion Traditional Zuni Dancers, from New Mexico.
December 3: A reception in the Great Hall to celebrate the December
26 broadcast of a documentary film produced by the History Channel "Save
Our History: Save Our Sounds." The program portrayed the audio
preservation work underway at the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian
Institution to preserve and digitize selected recordings from their
collections.
March 4: Editors Heid E. Erdrich and Laura Tohe discussed their book
Sister Nation: Native American Women Writers on Community (University
of Minnesota Press, 2002).
April 10: John Michael Vlach, professor of anthropology and American
studies, The George Washington University, gave an illustrated lecture
in celebration of Barns, the inaugural publication of the Norton/Library
of Congress Visual Sourcebooks in Architecture, Design and Engineering
series.
April 21: Documentary photographer Rob Amberg presented an illustrated
lecture based on his book Sodom Laurel Album, a visual and oral history
of a rural mountain community in Madison County, North Carolina, and
one family, steeped in the tradition of the region.
April 23: Irish music and dance, featuring legendary accordion player
Joe Derrane, instrumentalist John McGann (guitar and mandolin), sean
nos singer Bridget Fitzgerald, and two step dancers from the Culkin
School of Traditional Irish Dance, Silver Spring, Maryland.
April 30: Anthony Barrand, professor of anthropology at Boston University,
presented an illustrated lecture "But American for a Morris Dance!" in
the Montpelier Room.
May 1: "Bringing in the May," featuring five Morris dancing
groups from the Washington region: the Foggy Bottom Morris Men, Rock
Creek Morris Women, Shepherdstown Northwest Clog Morris, Arlington
Morris Girls, and Potomac Morris Men. The program was narrated by Anthony
Barrand.
May 21: Halau o na Maolipua, from Oahu, Hawaii, in a program of mele
hula.
June 18: The Cajun band Charivari, from Louisiana.
July 10: The bluegrass band The Seldom Scene, from the Washington,
D.C., area.
July 16: The Minnesota Scandinavia Ensemble and Becky Weis, Nordic
music from the upper Midwest.
August 7: Mariachi Los Amigos, based in Washington, D.C.
August 20: Robert Turner and the Silver Heart Gospel Singers from
Indianapolis, Indiana..
September 11: Little Bit of Blues, featuring Warner Williams and Jay
Summerour, from the Washington, D.C., area.
Education and Documentation Projects
Field Documentation Training School. June 13 to July 3, the AFC conducted
a field school in Crisfield and Salisbury, Maryland, in conjunction
with Salisbury University and the Ward Museum for Waterfowl Art. Student
projects focused on Crisfield, a maritime community in transition.
Montana Heritage Project. The very successful Montana Heritage Project,
now in its eighth year, is a model for several other state projects
in Arizona and Utah. On May 16, four students in the project, one teacher,
and one school librarian, along with project director Michael Umphrey,
visited the Library of Congress for a meeting with the Librarian and
a tour of the Geography and Map Division and the American Folklife
Center. On September 9, Peggy Bulger attended a meeting of the Executive
Board of the Montana Heritage Project, in Helena, Montana.
Arizona Heritage Project. In June and September, AFC staff made site
visits to attend the first summer institute of the Arizona Heritage
Project, in St. Johns, Arizona, and meet with staff and teachers engaged
in the project. Under the terms of an amendment that has been added
to the partnership agreement between the AFC and the Salt River Project,
AFC and SRP will continue to refine and develop the Arizona Heritage
Project's in-schools program until December 2004.
StoryCorps Project. The AFC has entered into a partnership with StoryCorps,
a national project of Sound Portraits, Inc., New York, New York, to
gather oral histories to be used in radio programming. The Archive
of Folk Culture will become the repository for the "born digital" documentary
materials collected by the project.
Veterans History Project
The Veterans History Project (VHP) was established by Congress in
October 2000 charging the American Folklife Center at the Library of
Congress to collect the stories of veterans from World War I, World
War II, the Korean, Vietnam, and Persian Gulf wars. The project staff
has received stories from thousands of individuals and continues to
publicize the project to the millions of veterans and affiliated civilians.
Since VHP acquisitions come from volunteers providing oral interviews
and other materials, the acquisitions strategy relies heavily on publicity
generated by events focusing on the importance of the nation's
veterans.
A key component of the Veterans History Project is the 170-plus select "partner
archives" nationwide that choose to--and have the proper facilities
to--preserve and provide public access to the materials. This "branch
library" component of the project enables local repositories
to participate actively in the project as partners, yet retain their
collections rather than send them to the Library of Congress, as do
the majority of the VHP's 800-plus partner organizations. Reasons
for this arrangement include pride in local history, and ease of access.
Partner archives agree to provide the American Folklife Center's
Veterans History Project with full descriptive data about veterans
for whom they retain interviews and other personal accounts of wartime;
this data becomes part of the VHP 's holdings database, which thus
functions as a union catalog. To date, over 700 collections are retained
by partner archives around the country.
The VHP Web site receives five to ten thousand hits daily with significant
spikes during commemorative dates. For instance, the VHP Web site logged
over fifty-thousand hits around Memorial Day. The National Registry
of Service made available on Veterans Day, 2002, lists individual interviewees
and pertinent information such as their branch and years of service.
Under the White House Conference topic of "American History,
Civics, and Service," the Veterans History Project was one of
the Library units selected to feature Web highlights from its collection
under the heading "Courage, Patriotism, Community." On
Memorial Day 2003, twenty-four notable collections featuring "courage," "patriotism," and "community" were
shown for the first time on the "Experiencing War" exhibit
site on VHP's main Web page. Quarterly additions will be made to the
site. These fully digitized collections of audiotape, videotape, letters,
photos, and memoirs can now be seen and heard in their entirety, along
with interpretive captions to contextualize these displays.
The Veterans History Project was able to highlight the contributions
of veterans belonging to the various groups celebrated by the Library
in keeping with other federal agencies: On October 1, 2002, the Hispanic
Heritage Month Program speaker was U.S. Rep. Joe Baca, and on September
29, 2003, the speaker was filmmaker Sonya Rhee discussing her PBS documentary
film "Soldados: Chicanos in Vietnam." On February 10, 2003,
the African American History Month Program featured Renee Poussaint,
Executive Director and Co-Founder, National Visionary Leadership Project.
On March 24, 2003, the Women's History Month Program: "Salute
to Women," was a show-and-tell presentation of women's
materials from the collections and VHP Web site tour by VHP staff.
On Mary 1, 2003, Francis Y. Sogi, Five Star Council Member spoke at
the Asian-Pacific Islander Heritage Month Program.
Other events included:
October 12, 2002: VHP staffed tables and computers in the LC Pavilion
at the National Book Festival and presented a demonstration interview
with Five Star Council member Sam Gibbons.
November 11, 2002: At the Veterans Day Program, Sacramento, California,
the VHP joined AARP California and other California partners in showcasing
the VHP to the California media and launching the involvement of AARP
volunteers there. The morning program included Library of Congress,
AARP, and community speakers. It was followed by a working luncheon
where VHP partners and potential partners shared information and successful
techniques for carrying out the Project.
May 2, 2003: At the VHP Partner Meeting and the Five Star Council
Meeting, Council members met with the VHP director and staff to discuss
the scope of the Project, outreach, preservation and other topics of
concern and interest. VHP welcomed approximately ninety-nine representatives
from seventy-three official partner organizations in 24 states to the
Library for the annual VHP partner meeting. Many of the participants
toured D.C. war memorials in the morning, and all attendees convened
for luncheon with Five Star Council members and spent the afternoon
in a plenary session and breakout groups.
May 22, 2003: In connection with the Library of Congress's Bob
Hope 100th Birthday Tribute, VHP conducted demonstration interviews
with USO performers Tony Hope, Patty Thomas, and Fayard Nicholas as
part of the Library's evening performance to celebrate Hope's
100th birthday.
June 6, 2003: The Atlanta D-Day Program co-sponsored with AARP Georgia,
was held at the Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, Georgia. Speakers
included the Governor of Georgia, the Secretary of the Department of
Veterans Affairs, several AARP Board members, Library of Congress representatives,
and a panel of D-Day veterans from Georgia. A VHP Partner, the Atlanta
History Center announced a new program to hold weekly open houses to
collect Georgia veterans' stories.
June 17, 2003: National History Day Teachers Meeting. Veterans History
Project presentations and training workshop for NHD teachers.
June 18, 2003: A program to announce the acquisition of World War
II veteran Tracy Sugarman's collection of wartime drawings, paintings,
and letters was jointly sponsored with the Prints and Photographs Division.
July 16, 2003: At a National D-Day Museum Program VHP staffed a table
at the reception following the screening of "The Burma Bridge
Busters," a film by Steven Spielberg. The event was sponsored
by the National D-Day Museum, a VHP partner.
July 26, 2003: The VHP staffed a table at the MCI Center in Washington,
D.C. prior to a special performance held on the occasion of the 50th
anniversary of the Korean War Armistice.
September 7-9, 2003: The VHP attended the AARP member event "Life
@50+." VHP staffed two exhibit booths, made stage presentations
on the floor of the exhibition hall, and conducted on-site interviews.
Preservation and Archival Projects
Save Our Sounds Audio Preservation Project. This project is now in
its third year and considerable progress has been made on all of the
eight collections earmarked for digitization. In partnership with the
Smithsonian Institution, the project is funded by a federal grant from
the National Park Service that has required a one-to-one match of funding
from non-federal sources. During FY 2003, the AFC entirely matched
its share of the federal funding ($285,000). Work on the individual
collections to date includes:
Eloise Hubbard Linscott Collection: Approximately 460 sound recordings,
6,000 pages of manuscript, and 100 photographs, as well as one association
copy of Linscott's book have been digitized and all data has
been entered for each item. The collection is now accessible to researchers
via computer terminals in the AFC reading room.
American Dialect Society: All intellectual and administrative data
has been entered in the metadata database; approximately 400 discs
have been digitized out of 800 discs total.
Don Yoder Collection: All spools of wire have been transferred to
analog preservation tape, and two spools, along with their archival
notes and an image of the spool box, have undergone digitization. All
metadata has been entered for the collection.
International Storytelling Collection: The collection has been arranged,
described, and housed; data has been entered for most of the items
in preparation for digitization. Equipment has been ordered for in-house
digitization of 1,000 sound recordings from the collection.
James Madison Carpenter Collection: Over 13,000 pages of manuscripts
and 560 photographs have been digitized. Contracts have been prepared
for the digitization of 160 cylinders and two cylinders have been digitized
as part of a test for the collection.
Eleanor Dickinson Collection: All 180 videotapes have been digitized,
and data has been entered on a database for all items in the collection.
Zuni Storytelling Collection: Data has been entered in the database
for all items, and 6 of the 200 tapes have been digitized.
Pearl Harbor Collection: All items in this collection have been digitized,
all data entered, and the collection is now completely accessible as
an American Memory site.
The project has used or obligated non-federal matching funds as follows
to perform grant-assisted work during the interim period:
Category |
Obligated |
cash |
$46,797.00 |
labor and services |
0.00 |
materials |
0.00 |
Total |
$79,536.00 |
Cumulative total to date |
$226,002.00 |
Contributions to the project have been made by Peggy Bulger, David
Kleiman, and the Nathan M. Orbach Foundation/The Tides Foundation.
AFC's Save Our Sounds project team were this year's winner
of the Rex Foundation's Ralph J. Gleason Award for $10,000, which
was used for preserving the AFC's Zuni Storytelling Collection.
Ethnographic Thesaurus. In July 2003, the American Folklife Center's
Ethnographic Thesaurus Project, in partnership with the American Folklore
Society, submitted a grant proposal to the Mellon Foundation for funding
to continue work on the project. During the past year, two new members
have joined the project's Task Force: Laurel Sercombe, archivist,
University of Washington Ethnomusicology Archives replaced music archivist
Jerry McBride; and Robert S. Leopold, anthropologist and archival information
manager at the National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian
Institution, replaced museum archivist Carrie Beauchamp.
Major Acquisitions
Anthony G. "Tony" Barrand, associate professor of anthropology
at Boston University, donated the Anthony G. Barrand American Morris-,
Sword-, and Clog-Dancing Collection, which includes videotapes and
films in various formats, photographic prints and transparencies, manuscripts,
research files, posters, programs, a collection inventory, and a searchable
database, all concerning the history, choreography, and performance
of Morris, sword, and clog dances in the United States. Barrand has
researched and documented these dances for over thirty years. Apart
from his academic work, Barrand is an internationally known singer
of traditional British songs (with singing partner John Roberts), and
a dancer, dance teacher, and teller of recitations.
Pete and Toshi Seeger of Beacon, New York, have donated the Pete and
Toshi Seeger Film Collection, which consists of numerous films documenting
traditional music, dance, crafts, games, and other aspects of world
folk culture. The films include some shot by the Seegers during a world
tour, as well as documentary films shot by other filmmakers. Included
in the latter category is rare newsreel footage of Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter.
King's College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, has donated the
George Korson Collection to the American Folklife Center, in order
to ensure that the collection materials receive proper care and appropriate
use. The collection comprises the life's work of prominent folklorist
George Korson (1899-1967). Korson achieved particular recognition for
research and writing about the cultural traditions of Pennsylvania,
especially the music and lore of coal miners. His books Songs and Ballads
of the Anthracite Miners, Minstrels of the Coal Patch, and Coal Dust
on the Fiddle are especially important contributions. In 1946, he directed
a field research project for the Library of Congress that documented
the songs of Pennsylvania miners. This resulted in the Library of Congress
record album Songs and Ballads of the Anthracite Miners (1947), which
Korson edited. Korson also edited the Library of Congress album Songs
and Ballads of the Bituminous Miners (1965). The Korson collection
includes correspondence, manuscripts, fieldnotes, song texts and tunes,
original sound recordings made in the field, photographs, publications,
and ephemera.
Veterans History Project (VHP) receipts passed the four thousand mark
in December 2002, and reached ten thousand by the end of September
2003. Individual items currently amount to over forty thousand. Official
partners numbered more than five hundred in December and over eight
hundred in September 2003. With newly donated VHP collections reaching
a rate of 125 per week, many rich collections are accumulating. Groups
of materials have been received from many interviewer/documenters,
including: Judith Kent (Flagler County Library, Palm Coast, Florida),
Don Byers and Scotty Springston (Virginia Air and Space Center, Hampton,
Virginia), Mary Adams Martin (Rochester, Minnesota), and Fred Wallace,
(AARP, Atlanta, Georgia). One individual collection of note, the Tracy
Sugarman Collection, was acquired in cooperation with the Library's
Prints and Photographs Division in June 2003. Sugarman, a U.S. naval
officer in England and Europe during World War II, donated his three
hundred-plus wartime letters to his wife, June, to the VHP, and his
ninety-three drawings and watercolor and oil paintings to the Prints
and Photographs Division.
Processing and Arrearage Reduction
During fiscal year 2003, the AFC had three and the Veterans History
Project had five permanent processing technicians in addition to temporary
and/or summer help to work on arrearage, an improvement from previous
years when primarily temporary workers processed collection materials.
Two full-time permanent technicians have resigned, however. New collections
continue to arrive, and twenty-six collections are in various stages
of processing. The Veterans History Project now includes more than
10,000 collections. The processing of Joel Halpern, Dunaway/Seeger,
Leadbelly/Lomax, Julie McCullough/Folklore Society of Greater Washington,
Todd-Sonkin Migrant Workers, Anne and Frank Warner, and Sam Eskin collections
have been completed, pending review of draft collection guides. As
part of the Save Our Sounds project, the American Dialect Society,
James Carpenter, Eleanore Dickinson, Eloise Linscott, Zuni Storytelling,
and Donn Yoder collections are being digitized and processed simultaneously.
The processing and arrearage reduction efforts will be greatly enhanced
by the forthcoming appointments of a new cataloger and two new processing
technicians.
The Veterans History Project is too new to have an official arrearage.
Since it began in 2000, its incoming collections have been reviewed,
processed, and made accessible within six months of receipt. At current
rates--125 new collections per week--the VHP processing team is able
to adhere to the six-month turnaround schedule. As acquisition rates
increase, either the processing team will grow in number or the team
will prioritize processing based on the quality and content of submission
and preservation requirements.
Number of Reference Queries
|
Reference |
Directional |
In-Person |
1,804 |
1,269 |
Telephone Service |
1,707 |
1,051 |
Email Service |
1,857 |
508 |
Letters, fax |
291 |
75 |
Digital Projects
American Memory Presentations. Courage, Patriotism, Community includes
a presentation of the American Folklife Center's Local Legacies Project
and "Experiencing War," a selection of materials collected
through the Center's Veterans History Project was put on the Internet.
An expanded version of the Center's presentation of the World
War II "Man-on-the-Street Interviews" has been put online
as an American Memory project: After the Day of Infamy: The "Man
On the Street" Interviews.
New pages on the AFC Web site
The revised version of the publication Folklife and Fieldwork:
A Layman's Introduction to Field Techniques.
A tribute to Alan Lomax titled "Alan Lomax, 1915-2002"
"The New Yellow Ribbon Tradition" pages provide two articles
by Gerald E. Parsons Jr. on the emergence of the custom of wearing
or displaying yellow ribbons.
The top pages in the AFC site have been revised to include coding
that will make them more efficient to search and maintain. This process
is continuing with pages lower down in the site hierarchy.
The process of encoding new cross-collection topical finding aids
for the Web and converting those in ASCII text to HTML has been streamlined
by reference staff by creating and using a Dreamweaver template. Converting
the ASCII texts already online to HTML makes these texts fully searchable
by the Library's Web site search engine, as well as commercial
Internet search engines. In addition, interns and volunteers assisted
reference this year by re-keying topical finding aids that were not
in a word-processing format. Some of these older guides have been updated
by interns as well. A similar template is being developed for converting
word-processed or ASCII text collection guides to HTML. Twenty-three
new finding aids were added to the Center's Web site. Twenty
one finding aids already online were updated from ASCII text to HTML.
Both categories are listed below.
New Finding Aids Online This Year
African Material in the Archive of Folk Culture
Benelux Collections (Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg) in the Archive of
Folk Culture
Cuban and Cuban American Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture
Finnish and Finnish American Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture
The Harold C. Conklin Philippine Collection
Indiana Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture
The Joel Martin Halpern Collection
Maryland Field Recordings in the Archive of Folk Culture
Michigan Material in the Archive of Folk Culture
New Jersey Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture
North Dakota Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture
Pennsylvania Field Recordings in the Archive of Folk Culture
Principal Collections of Field Recordings in the Archive of Folk Culture Which
Contain Negro Spirituals
Recordings made in Louisiana and by Selected Louisiana Performers in the Archive
of Folk Culture
Sea Shanties and Sailors' Songs: A Preliminary Guide to Recordings in the Archive
of Folk Song
South Asian Recordings in the Archive of Folk Culture
Street Cries, Auction Chants, and Carnival Pitches and Routines in the Recorded
Collections of the Archive of Folk Culture
Utah Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture
Virginia Folklore in the Archive of Folk Culture: Field Recordings
Washington Field Recordings in the Archive of Folk Culture
Welsh and Welsh American Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture
West Virginia Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture
The Working in Paterson Project Collection
Converted from Online ASCII texts to HTML
Alaska Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture (sept 2002 not
reported)
A List of Fiddlers on Field Recordings in the Archive of Folk Song
A Selected Listing of English-Language Folksongs of the United States Sung
by Children in the Recorded Collections of the Archive of Folk Song
The Art Rosenbaum/Georgia Folklore Collection
Boatbulding Documentation in the Archive of Folk Culture
Brazil Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture
Colorado Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture
Iowa Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture
Kentucky Recordings in the Archive of Folk Culture
Mexico Recordings in the Archive of Folk Culture
Minnesota Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture
Ohio Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture
Oregon Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture
Puerto Rico Recordings in the Archive of Folk Culture
Recordings of Slave Narratives and Related Materials in the Archive of Folk
Culture
Robert Winslow Gordon Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture
South Carolina Field Recordings in the Archive of Folk Culture
Tales of the Supernatural
World War II Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture
Zora Neale Hurston Recordings, Manuscripts, and Ephemera in the Library of
Congress
International Outreach
American Folklife Center Participation in International Meetings.
AFC staff represented the American Folklife Center and the folklore
professional community at a number of international meetings this year.
On December 5-7, David Taylor attended the UNESCO conference "Protecting
the Cultural and Natural Heritage in the Western Hemisphere: Lessons
from the Past, Looking to the Future," at Harvard University,
Cambridge, Massachusetts. On December 9-11, Peggy Bulger and Michael
Taft attended the Fourth Session of the Intergovernmental Committee
on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge
and Folklore, World Intellectual Property Organization, in Geneva,
Switzerland, as members of the U.S. delegation.
International and Domestic Professional Visitors. Foreign visitors
to the American Folklife Center from libraries and other cultural agencies
and organizations outside the United States included: On October 2,
twelve museum directors from Russia; on November 7, ten American studies
specialists from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia; on February 13,
three cultural specialists from Moldova; on March 21, the editor-in-chief
of French Programs, Moroccan Radio and Television, Morocco; on June
24, ten librarians from Thailand; on June 24, the head of the folklore
archives at Université Laval, Quebec, Canada; on September 11,
six librarians from Croatia; and on September 30, twelve librarians
from Russia.
Visitors from libraries and other cultural agencies and organizations
within the United States included: On October 11, twenty-five library
science students from the School of Information and Library Science,
The Pratt Institute, New York; on November 26, thirty-five school librarians
from Brooklyn, New York; on February 6, three Native American participants
in the National Archives Institute; on March 6, seven women from the
National Women's Division of the American Committee for Shaare
Zedek Jerusalem Medical Center; on June 12, five librarians and archivists
who were participating in the Modern Archives Institute; on July 17,
18 and 21, three Nevada folklorists..
Print Publications
The revised third edition of Folklife and Fieldwork was printed in
December 2002, and the popular booklet is once again available for
free distribution.
The fall 2002 issue of Folklife Center News published articles on
the Montana Heritage Project, by Michael Umphrey; Oral Tradition at
the Library of Congress, by James Hardin; and A Brief History of Chinese
Puppetry, by Nora Yeh. The winter 2003 issue of Folklife Center News
was published articles by Amanda Brown, on the Veterans History Project;
David Taylor, on the acquisition of the Aaron Ziegelman Foundation
Collection; Michael Taft, on the WIPO conference in Geneva; and James
Hardin and Michael Taft, on the History Channel documentary on the
Save Our Sounds project. The spring issue of Folklife Center News published
an article by James Hardin on the Archive of Folk Culture, which was
founded seventy-five years ago, on July 1, 1928. The summer issue of
Folklife Center News published an interview with National Park Service
Director Fran Mainella, conducted by David Taylor and James Hardin
(which the Park Service will put on their Web site "Inside NPS");
an article on the James Madison Carpenter Collection and the Anthony
G. Barrand Collection of Morris, Sword, and Clog Dancing, by Jennifer
Cutting; and a notice on the Rounder Records reissue in compact disc
format of the AFC's historic field recordings.
Appropriated, Gift, and Trust Funds
The appropriated budget for the American Folklife Center (apart from
the Veterans History Project), for fiscal year 2003, was $2,693,000.
Salaries amounted to $1,750,000 of that amount.
American Folklife Center gift and trust funds continue to suffer from
a decline in the value of investments in the stock market, and there
has been little activity in the funds this year. On January 28, the
governing committee of the Parsons Fund for Ethnography held its annual
January meeting and re-elected Ann Hoog chair. Initially the committee
was unable to offer an award from the fund, but at a later meeting,
March 10, Hoog announced that donations made by Peggy Parsons and Judith
Gray made possible an award of up to $1,500 to be made in May. On April
30, the Parsons Fund Committee voted to award $900 to Nicole Saylor
for her project to create Web pages presenting Sidney Robertson Cowell's
fieldwork in Wisconsin.
Fund Title |
Balance |
Raye Virginia Allen Fund |
$49,341 |
Blanton Owen Fund for Fieldwork |
$16,541 |
Parsons Fund for Ethnography |
$29,569 |
Henry Reed Fund for Folk Artists |
$32,708 |
Veterans History Project |
$466,351 |
Veterans History Project DAV |
$50,000 |
American Folklife Center Gift Fund |
$59,131 |
AFC/Save Our Sounds Various Donors |
$59,000 |
SOS/Smithsonian |
$73,243 |
SOS/NARAS |
$34,197 |
Friends of the Folk Archive |
$56,000 |
Elizabeth Hamer Kegan Fund |
$21,000 |
Key Personnel Changes
On October 11, Mary Hufford resigned her position as a folklife specialist
in order to continue with her work on the graduate faculty of the University
of Pennsylvania. Hufford has been on leave-without-pay for a year.
On December 1, Michael Taft was appointed to the position of supervisory
librarian (head of the Archive of Folk Culture).
On June 15, Ellen McCulloch-Lovell was appointed director of the Veterans
History Project.
On August 4, Ilana Harlow began work at the AFC as a folklife specialist.
On August 25, Guha Shankar began work at the AFC as a folklife specialist.
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