Building the Digital Collection

Digitizing the Sound Recordings
Digitizing the Photographs
Cataloging the Collection

Digitizing the Sound Recordings

The sound recordings presented in the online collection were taken from the original seven-inch reel-to-reel tape recordings in the Library's collections. The analog audio from the tapes was transferred to Digital Audio Tape (DAT) to produce a master source for digitization. Some background noise may be apparent on the recordings. The audio files have not been digitally enhanced or altered in any way from their original state. WAVE, RealAudio, and MP3 versions have been supplied for each recording.

The WAVE files were created from the DAT tape at a sampling rate of 22,050 samples per second, 16-bit word length, and a single (mono) channel. The RealAudio and MP3 files were derived from the WAVE files by digital processing. The RealAudio files were created for users who have at least a 14.4 modem.

Digitizing the Photographs

JJT, Inc., of Austin, Texas, the Library's pictorial image contractor, produced the digital images in this collection in 1999. The company uses a digital camera manufactured in Germany and enhanced with JJT's custom software.

An uncompressed archival or master file was produced for each photograph, as well as three derivative files. The level of resolution employed for the Library's archival pictorial-image files is now ranging from 3000-by-2000 pixels to 5000-by-4000 pixels, depending on the types of original materials.

Cataloging the Collection

Quilts and Quiltmaking in America comprises selections from two collections housed at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress: the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project Collection and the Lands' End All-American Quilt Contest Collection. The two collections' item level documentation differs. Because of this disparity, their materials have been described and indexed at different levels of detail.

• Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project: Sound Recordings
  The sound recordings presented in this online collection are segments of in-depth interviews with quiltmakers recorded during the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project. The materials were selected and given titles and subject terms by Laurel Horton. Horton also transcribed all the interview segments in order to enhance their accessibility to researchers who may be hearing-impaired, unfamiliar with the dialect of the speakers or with spoken English, or need clarification of quilt-related vocabulary or local place names. Additional information about these recordings was derived from the audio logs prepared by Geraldine Johnson.

• Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project: Photographs
  Information about the photographs from the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project was derived from the photo logs prepared by the project's fieldworkers, from the project's audio interviews, and from project fieldworker Geraldine Johnson's fieldnotes. In order to provide more specific descriptions of the quilts and situations portrayed in these photographs than Library of Congress Subject Headings and the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials permit, the consultant for the online collection, Laurel Horton, devised a special list of subject terms.

• Lands' End All-American Quilt Contest Collection
  The photographs presented here were taken by contest photographers and are not those supplied by the quiltmakers when entering the contest.

  The only written documentation for the items in the Lands' End All-American Quilt Contest Collection were the entry forms submitted by the quiltmakers when they entered the contests. In order to gain more detailed information about these quilts and more contextual information about the quiltmakers, informational survey forms were mailed to the contest winners in 1998 and 1999. The survey questions were designed by Laurel Horton and the staff at the American Folklife Center. The terms they used were chosen to elicit information comparable to the descriptive data available for the items in the Blue Ridge Folklife Project Collection in order to enable online users to search more easily across materials from both collections.

  Responses were received from 153 of the 181 winners. These individuals provided detailed information about the winning quilts, such as what materials they had used for the quilt tops and batting, what quiltmaking techniques and processes they had employed, and the names of the quilts' traditional patterns. Most also included answers to questions about their motivations for making quilts, when and how they had learned to quilt, and whether or not being a winner in the Lands' End contest had made a difference in their lives or in how they viewed their quiltmaking. This information is presented in this online collection as it was received from each quiltmaker. The terms under the records' "Subject" heading are based on the survey check-lists. Additional information appears under the heading "Notes."