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Maine
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
The collections of the American Folklife Center contain rich and varied
materials from Maine that document the diversity of the state's folk traditions.
Among its rarest materials are the first wax-cylinder field recordings,
made in 1890 of Passamaquoddy Indian music and tales in Calais. There are
also maritime and lumbering traditions; oral histories from Aroostook county;
and African American Baptist services. The Center conducted the Maine Acadian
Cultural Survey in 1991, which documented the ongoing traditions of the
Acadian
people of the northernmost regions of the state. The documentary
material created during the project, including thousands of photographs
and hundreds of hours of interviews, has been incorporated into the collections
of the Folklife Center.
Maine 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 Research Projects
Publications
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