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                             FOLKLIFE CENTER NEWS

                           American Folklife Center
                           The Library of Congress  
                              Winter-Spring 1996
                         Volume XVIII, Numbers 1 and 2
                  ISSN 0149-6840  Catalog Card No. 77-649628
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The American Folklife Center was created in 1976 by the U.S.
Congress to "preserve and present American folklife" through
programs of research, documentation, archival preservation,
reference service, live performance, exhibition, publication, and
training. The Center incorporates the Archive of Folk Culture,
which was established in the Music Division of 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.

Administration

Alan Jabbour, Director
Doris Craig, Administrative Assistant
Mary Gainey, Clerk
Camila Bryce-Laporte, Program Coordinator

Acquisitions

Joseph C. Hickerson, Head

Processing

Stephanie A. Hall, Archivist Coordinator 
Catherine Hiebert Kerst, Archivist

Programs

Peter T. Bartis, Folklife Specialist
Mary Hufford, Folklife Specialist
David A. Taylor, Folklife Specialist

Publications

James Hardin, Editor

Public Events

Theadocia Austen, Coordinator

Reference

Judith A. Gray, Folklife Specialist
Jennifer A. Cutting, Reference Specialist

Administrative Office

Tel: 202 707-6590
Fax: 202 707-2076

Reference Service

Tel: 202 707-5510  

Federal Cylinder Project

Tel: 202 707-1740
 
Board of Trustees

Judith McCulloh, Chair, Illinois
Carolyn Hecker, Vice-chair, Maine
Nina Archabal, Minnesota
William L. Kinney Jr., South Carolina
Ada E. Deer, Wisconsin, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs,
Department of Interior
Joseph D. Duffey, West Virginia, Director of the United States
Information Agency
Madeleine M. Kunin, Vermont, Deputy Secretary of Education
Shirley S. Sagawa, Virginia, a Managing Director of the Corporation
for National and Community Service
 
Ex Officio Members  

James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress
I. Michael Heyman, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
Jane Alexander, Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts
Sheldon Hackney, Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities
Alan Jabbour, Director, American Folklife Center

FOLKLIFE CENTER NEWS

James Hardin, Editor
David A. Taylor, Editorial Advisor
John Biggs, Library of Congress Graphics Unit, Designer
Folklife Center News publishes articles on the programs and
activities of the American Folklife Center, as well as other
articles on traditional expressive culture. It is available free of
charge from the Library of Congress, American Folklife Center,
Washington, D.C. 20540-4610. Folklife Center News does not publish
announcements from other institutions or reviews of books from
publishers other than the Library of Congress. Readers who would
like to comment on Center activities or newsletter articles may
address their remarks to the editor.

TELEPHONE AND ONLINE INFORMATION RESOURCES

American Folklife Center publications (including Folklife Center
News), a calendar of events, collection guides, general
information, and connections to a selection of other Internet
services related to folklife are available on the Internet via the
LC MARVEL Gopher Server and the LC Web World Wide Web Server.   LC
MARVEL is available through your local Gopher server. Or use your
Gopher Client Software to connect to marvel.loc.gov. From the main
menu, choose "Research and Reference," then "Reading Rooms," then
"American Folklife Center."
 LC Web is available through your local World Wide Web service. The
Center's home page can be accessed from the Library's main menu.
The direct URL for the Center's home page is: 
http://lcweb.loc.gov/folklife

 Folkline, an information service providing timely information on
the field of folklore and folklife, including training and
professional opportunities and news items of national interest, is
available through both the above Internet servers and by telephone.
For the telephone service (available around the clock, except
during the hours of 9 A.M. until noon each Monday, when it is
updated), dial:

202 707-2000.


EDITOR'S NOTES

The bill "to provide for the establishment of the American Folklife
Center in the Library of Congress," Public Law 94-201, was signed
by President Gerald Ford on January 2, 1976, the first working day
of the Bicentennial year. It had been nearly a hundred years since
Congress recognized the importance of folk culture with an act to
continue the Bureau of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian
Institution in 1897. This year has seen a renewed debate in
Congress on the role of the federal government in cultural
programming (particularly in connection with funding for the
National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities).

In this issue of _Folklife Center News_, Alan Jabbour offers the
first of a two-part retrospective on the American Folklife Center.
He reviews the history of the legislation creating the Center and
the describes the major accomplishments of the field documentation
projects the Center has carried out over the past twenty years. In
the second part, he will look at the growth and development of the
Archive of Folk Culture and a number of the Center's programmatic
activities and will consider the place of folklife on the national
cultural scene "as we approach the Millennium."


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The American Folklife Center: The First Twenty Years

By Alan Jabbour
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The American Folklife Preservation Act

This year is the twentieth anniversary of the birth of the American
Folklife Center. The American Folklife Preservation Act, Public Law
94-201, passed both houses of Congress at the end of 1975 and was
signed into law by President Ford on January 2, 1976. Twenty years
is a generation, by some systems of reckoning, which invites
reflections on the course of the Center's development--and the
state of folklife itself--as we approach the millennium.
 The bill that ultimatly created the American Folklife Center was
originally inspired by the Festival of American Folklife, first
presented by the Smithsonian Institution in 1967. Conceived by the
Smithsonian's Secretary, S. Dillon Ripley, and its director of
performing arts, James Morris, as a way of making the museums "come
alive" on the National Mall, the festival was created by Ralph
Rinzler, who brought to the challenge his previous experience with
the Newport Folk Festival. Its success drew the attention of
members of Congress, and a bill was drafted that, after several
years of debate and negotiation, resulted in the creation of the
Center.

The legislation had an impact even before its final enactment. It
was initially drafted to create a grant-giving foundation, but its
grant-giving provisions drew opposition from the National
Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, which had been created in
the 1960s to provide grants in the cultural sphere. The endowments
argued that their legislation already provided a mandate for grants
dealing with "folklife"--the term was then novel in the public
sphere, but "folklore" had a venerable history in both public
programs and the academy in the United States. Folklorists
advocating passage of the legislation retorted that, since the
endowments favored "elite culture" over "folk culture," a third
agency committed to folk culture was necessary to balance the
cultural equation. The endowments protested that they had already
given grants dealing with folk culture; the folklorists insisted
that they had not, and that in any case they lacked the expertise
to determine whether they had.

The debate triggered by congressional consideration of the
legislation led Nancy Hanks, chairman of the National Endowment for
the Arts, to call a formal meeting on the subject, and then to
launch the Folk Arts Program at the Arts Endowment in the spring of
1974. That program has had a profound effect on the development of
folk arts programming around the country. Unfortunately, though the
Humanities Endowment has hired folklorists to serve on its
professional staff, it developed no comparable program during the
past generation.

The legislation itself remained in Senate committee until late in
1975. Sen. Claiborne Pell, who chaired the committee and had been
a key sponsor of the enabling legislation for the two endowments,
had grown sympathetic to the folklife bill but felt that federal
grant-giving for cultural activities should be confined to the
existing endowments. After a compromise was negotiated deleting the
grant-giving provisions from the folklife bill, Senator Pell
reported it out of committee, and it passed the Senate at the end
of the first session of the 94th Congress.

On balance, many factors were conjoined in passage of the
legislation. The intrepid advocacy of folklorist Archie Green kept
the bill alive through years of backstage debate and steadily
broadened congressional support for the concept. The argument that
the bill would right the balance culturally, counteracting the
elite bias of the two endowments, proved effective, advancing the
legislation while simultaneously pressing the endowments to pay
more serious attention to folk cultural traditions. The conjunction
of the bill with the approaching Bicentennial of the American
Revolution was likewise helpful, for the celebration of the
Bicentennial in 1976 took a grassroots turn, emphasizing the
variety of local, ethnic, and other cultural traditions as strands
in the fabric of the nation. The 1970s in general were a period of
increased attention to "roots"--those aspects of heritage that lie
between the individual and the nation, and that connect individuals
to communities while defining the nation as a whole
pluralistically.

The definition of folklife in the American Folklife Preservation
Act anchored the Center firmly in the expressive culture of the
family, ethnic, religious, occupational, and regional groups that
make up America. When the Senate suddenly appeared about to move on
the legislation, Archie Green, the bill's key lobbyist, anxiously
contacted a Senate aide with the sole purpose of modifying certain
phrases in the legislation's definition of folklife. The aide later
expressed wonderment that the critical issue in the final moments
was refining the concept, not arguing for more money. But the
definitions and justifications of the act, apart from shaping the
direction of the Center, have influenced other federal agencies,
state legislation, and even the legislation of other nations in the
twenty years since passage of the act.

Birth of the Center

The legislation had originally conceived of a foundation within the
Smithsonian Institution, but for a variety of reasons the host
agency became the Library of Congress, which since the 1920s had
built a famous archive of folk music and folklore. The Library had
supported the legislation from the outset, but final passage of the
bill caught the institution in a moment of transition between
retiring Librarian of Congress L. Quincy Mumford and the new
Librarian, Daniel J. Boorstin. Arrangements for launching the
Center were undertaken by Elizabeth Hamer Kegan, who had served the
Library for many years as Assistant Librarian of Congress. A
reception was arranged in honor of the legislation's passage; the
board of trustees was appointed by the Speaker of the House and the
president pro tempore of the Senate; Dr. Boorstin convened the
board for its inaugural meeting, during which it elected
distinguished folklorist Wayland D. Hand as its first chairman; and
in September of 1976 the Librarian appointed me as the director. I
had formerly served as head of the Library's Archive of Folk Song
and had been director of the Folk Arts Program at the National
Endowment for the Arts from 1974 through 1976.

Starting up an office--especially one with no precedent in
government--has its special administrative challenges. One must,
for example, fashion job descriptions for positions that have never
before existed, such as "folklife specialist." Early staff
appointments to the Center included secretary Paula Johnson (now at
the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History); research
secretary Carol Armbruster (now with the European Division of the
Library of Congress); secretary-editor Brett Topping (who later
accepted a position at the National Museum of Women in the Arts);
folklife specialists Carl Fleischhauer (now with the National
Digital Library program of the Library of Congress), Elena Bradunas
(now residing in Hawaii), and Howard W. Marshall (now at the
University of Missouri); executive assistant Eleanor Sreb (now
retired); deputy director Ray Dockstader (now retired); secretary
(now administrative assistant) Doris Craig; and researcher (now
folklife specialist) Peter Bartis.

At the end of the first partial fiscal year of the Center's
history, not all the funds for staffing could be spent, so
equipment was purchased for the purpose of future fieldwork. A bit
of money still remained, so the Reverend Howard Finster of
Summerville, Georgia, was commissioned to paint two signs and two
paintings in honor of the Center's creation. Reverend Finster, who
has subsequently become nationally famous, calls the commission his
first recognition outside of Georgia. The two paintings hang in the
director's office today--when they are not being exhibited by
various museums around the country.

Early Initiatives

One of the first initiatives of Librarian Daniel J. Boorstin was to
open up the main front entrance of the old Library of Congress
building, now known as the Thomas Jefferson Building. For years the
main entrance, which opens into the Great Hall and the Main Reading
Room, had been closed as an economy measure. Opening the door, for
Dr. Boorstin, symbolized making the Library a more open and
accessible institution. Since the American Folklife Center had been
created just as he arrived at the Library, he suggested that the
Center sponsor a public event on the plaza in front of the main
entrance to vivify its grand opening. The Center responded with a
noontime concert on September 23, 1976, featuring Washington
bluesmen Big Chief Ellis, John Cephas, Phil Wiggins, and James
Bellman. The concert was arranged by Richard K. Spottswood--now the
host of a weekly folk-music program on Washington's WAMU-FM--who at
the time was completing his editing of the fifteen-volume record
series _Folk Music in America_, issued by the Library in
celebration of the Bicentennial. The event was so successful that
there was an immediate clamor for more concerts on the front steps
of the Library. Thus was born a twenty-year series of programs on
what was dubbed "Neptune Plaza," in honor of the fountain featuring
Neptune between the plaza and First Street.

The Center's next initiative was more ambitious and again drew upon
the ideas and energies of Dick Spottswood. On January 24-26, 1977,
the Center sponsored its first conference, on the subject of
"Ethnic Recordings in America: A Neglected Heritage." The
conference sought to highlight the importance of the vast corpus of
ethnic recordings produced by American commercial recording
companies in the first half of the twentieth century. Though
scholars and collectors had paid attention to the "hillbilly
records" and the African-American "race records" of the same era,
the stunning variety of recordings from various ethnic groups in
the United States had not been collected, archived, analyzed, or
reissued. They represented an untapped trove of heritage, and the
gathering of scholars, collectors, ethnic record producers, and
others was calculated to bring this heritage to the attention of a
wider audience. The conference was augmented by an exhibit on the
subject and an evening concert featuring Texas border singer Lydia
Mendoza and the Polish Highlanders of Chicago.

In retrospect, the ethnic recordings conference succeeded in the
longterm results for which it was designed. A few years later the
Center published a book drawn from the conference, _Ethnic
Recordings in America: A Neglected Heritage_ (1982). A further
outgrowth of the conference was Spottswood's discography _Ethnic
Music on Records_ (7 vols.; Urbana and Chicago:  University of
Illinois Press, 1990), a monumental work of scholarship assembled
with assistance from the Library's Information Technology Services
office and still maintained and updated as a Library computer
database. In the years following the conference, many ethnic
records from the early twentieth century were reissued, fueling a
renaissance of interest in and performance of any number of ethnic
music traditions in the United States. The initiative was the
Center's first major undertaking, and it illustrates how the Center
from its inception established and cultivated points of continuity
between itself and the Archive of Folk Song, which had preceded it
at the Library.

The first full year of the Center's operations was 1977, and in
that year it launched two field documentary projects, the Chicago
Ethnic Arts Project and the South-Central Georgia Folklife Project.
They set into motion a pattern of field documentary projects that
has characterized the Center's work for the two decades of its
existence. Both projects were arts-connected. The Chicago project,
coordinated by Elena Bradunas, responded to a request from the
Illinois Arts Council, which had been mandated by its state
legislature to begin a program in support of ethnic arts and asked
for guidance on the networks and artistic traditions of Chicago's
many ethnic groups. The Georgia project, coordinated by Howard W.
Marshall, responded to an invitation from the Arts Experiment
Station, based at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College and
operating programs in an eight-county area of south-central
Georgia.

Though one was urban and one rural, both projects emphasized the
importance of documenting artistic traditions professionally, using
sound recordings and still photography, with an eye both to
creating public products and to building an archive for the future.
In this respect they bore the imprint of the Center's media
specialist, Carl Fleischhauer. Both projects also were designed
with the strategy of leaving behind a permanent position in the
region after the Center's work was over.

The Chicago project led to a lengthy final report with
recommendations to the Illinois Arts Council for future
programming. At the same time, the contributions of project
photographer Jonas Dovydenas were highlighted in the exhibition and
catalog _Inside Our Homes, Outside Our Windows_, which opened at
the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 1979 and later
traveled to the Library of Congress, then to Springfield, Illinois,
Milwaukee, and (with the help of the USIA) Dubrovnik. The Georgia
project took another tack. After the fieldwork was completed, the
Center held a series of workshops in the region to report to local
citizens on the results of the fieldwork. A booklet of photographs
entitled _Sketches of South Georgia Folklife_ was distributed to
workshop attendees. The archive for the Chicago project includes
extensive manuscript materials, 342 sound recorded tapes, 8000
black-and-white photographs, and 3700 color transparencies. The
Georgia collection is similar but somewhat larger and includes
video recordings. A reference archive of the collection was
prepared for an institution in the project area--a customary
procedure in later projects.

The South Georgia Project had one further product not foreseen when
the project was planned. In 1978 the Center drew upon the results
of the project to create a photographic exhibit on South Georgia
folklife. The idea cross-pollinated with an Atlanta-generated
exhibit on Georgia folk art, "Missing Pieces," and the Library's
exhibits officer, Michael Carrigan, decided to fill the entire
ground floor of the Library's Jefferson Building with both
exhibits. The First Lady and Amy Carter helped open the double
exhibition. Rev. Howard Finster, who had sent his art by Greyhound
bus to help launch the Center not long before, still talks about
the Georgia contingent's hair-raising airplane ride to Washington
to see the exhibition.

The Center and the Archive

On November 17-18, 1978, just over two years after its creation,
the Center organized a symposium on the Archive of Folk Song in
honor of the Archive's 50th anniversary. Implicit in the
celebration was the fact that a few months earlier, on July 31, the
Archive had been transferred from the Library's Music Division to
become part of the Center.

Founded in 1928 within the Music Division, the Archive made
important contributions to ethnography, folklore and folk music
research, public programming, and cultural documentation and
preservation in every decade of its distinguished history. Its
heads included Robert W. Gordon, John A. Lomax, Alan Lomax,
Benjamin A. Botkin, Duncan Emrich, Rae Korson, Alan Jabbour, and
Joseph C. Hickerson. Though originally named the Archive of
American Folk-Song, it had begun documenting folk music beyond the
borders of the United States as early as 1935, when Alan Lomax
recorded in the Bahamas, and by 1940 it had expanded its
documentary scope well beyond folk music into folklore, verbal
arts, and oral history. Since the 1950s it had been named simply
the Archive of Folk Song.

The 50th anniversary symposium marked a turning point for the
Center's development. The legislation specifically authorized the
creation of an archival center for folklife. Center field projects
were rapidly generating a large new archival corpus of documents in
several media. It made no sense to duplicate the efforts of an
existing archive within the Library by creating a separate archive
for the Center. Further, the Center staff believed in a cycle of
activity moving from field documentation to archival preservation
and access to public programming. Lacking an archive meant lacking
a critical stage in that cyclical process. At another level, so
long as the Center was separate from the Archive, it was in a real
sense separated from its institutional history within the Library
and seemed extraneous to the institution. The conceptually logical
and economical solution was to merge the Archive of Folk Song with
the Center, at once making the Center whole and wedding it to the
history and mission of its host institution.

Joining the Archive fully to the Center was a long process.
Initially it was simply an administrative matter: the three staff
members of the Archive--Joseph C. Hickerson, Gerald E. Parsons,
Jr., and Patricia Markland--were transferred to the Center roster.
But in time each "part" of the Center inevitably began to influence
the other. The first important step toward integrating their
missions was changing the name of the Archive. In 1979, reflecting
both the historical broadening of the Archive's purview and the
Center's need to deal archivally with all aspects of folklife, the
name was changed to the Archive of Folk Culture.

Field Projects, East and West

One way the Center immediately changed the Archive was by infusing
into its collections the multiformat documentary results of field
projects representing a panoply of folklife traditions. Field
projects were a major activity of the Center over its first two
decades. They may have seemed to represent a new direction, but in
reality they restored an activity that had characterized the
Archive in the 1930s and again in the 1970s. Looked at in that
light, the Center's innovation was not in instituting fieldwork,
but in expanding it to include not only music but verbal arts,
material culture, occupational traditions, and other aspects of
culture not documented by the Archive in an earlier generation.
Similarly, the basic tools of documentation expanded to include not
only sound recordings but photography. And finally, the process of
fieldwork expanded from the classic one or two workers to teams of
several professionals working in close interaction. Yet the ideal
of fieldwork--generating a permanent body of knowledge for the
archive through documentation in the field--can be said to
characterize the whole history of folklore and folklife activities
at the Library of Congress, from the Archive's inception in 1928
through the Center's work in the last quarter of the century.

The early field projects mounted by the Center in Chicago and South
Georgia were followed by a project in 1978 in the Blue Ridge
Mountains of Virginia and North Carolina. The area is legendary for
its musical traditions--well represented in the early recordings of
the Archive of Folk Culture--but that was not why the Center chose
the Blue Ridge for a major project. Instead, the choice of locale
was made by the Center's partner in the project, the National Park
Service. The director of the Park Service, William Whalen, had been
named by President Carter to the Center's board, and discussions
began on collaborating to study the folk cultural traditions within
and surrounding a national park. Planning focused on two possible
sites, Olympic National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway; the Blue
Ridge Parkway was finally selected.

The Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project focused on a band of
counties bordering the Blue Ridge in northwestern North Carolina
and southwestern Virginia. The project team documented a wide range
of Blue Ridge traditional life, from festivals and jam sessions
through church services and religious narratives to crop harvesting
and food curing. In comparison to the Center's 1977 projects, the
Blue Ridge project was more comprehensive: artistic expression
remained the central focus of the documentation, but the sweep of
fieldwork was broader than in South Georgia and much broader than
in Chicago. A perusal of the photographs reveals not only music,
dance, crafts, preaching, stories, and community celebrations, but
beans drying in the back window of a car in a parking lot, Mexicans
harvesting cabbages, and teenagers at a drive-in. The Center was
merging the Archive's tradition of artistic documentation with the
concept of ethnography.

A goal of the Blue Ridge research was to provide the National Park
Service with knowledge of the living cultural traditions along the
Blue Ridge Parkway for use in park interpretation and planning. The
Park Service has a long-standing interest in traditional culture,
but cultural interpretation had often been filtered through a lens
that, in the Center's opinion, sometimes made traditional culture
seem solely a function of the historical past. Countervailing with
a vigorous portrayal of the presentness of culture--no less alive,
dynamic, and developing for being traditional--was perhaps the
central thrust of Center documentation in such projects.

The Blue Ridge work yielded two significant products, both
reflecting the tenor of the fieldwork itself. _Blue Ridge Harvest_,
edited by Carl Fleischhauer, provided a balanced photographic
statement not only about the project but about the texture of
culture and community in the region. It is, surprisingly, a rare
instance of a photographic publication making a balanced,
comprehensive statement about American grassroots culture.
_Children of the Heav'nly King_ is equally unusual, presenting a
specific subtheme of the project, religious expressive traditions.
Edited by project coordinator Charles K. Wolfe, its two long-
playing recordings, coupled with a lengthy textual and photographic
booklet, bring together not only religious music but sermons,
prayers, religious narratives, and (through the photographs)
religion in the cultural landscape. No such multimedia statement on
American religious expression had appeared before, to the best of
our knowledge, but its influence is discernible on later
publications from other institutions. It provided no little
satisfaction to Center staff that subsequent visits revealed both
publications in the homes of many Blue Ridge citizens.

In 1978 the Center launched its first Western project. Center staff
had been eager to expand the Center's westward purview, and the
national media were just beginning to focus, under the headline
"Sagebrush Rebellion," on the feelings of national neglect, federal
encroachment, and cultural endangerment in the ranching country of
the inland West. Walking into a sagebrush rebellion carrying a
federal banner might seem imprudent, but Center staff wanted to try
their documentary skills on traditional ranching and felt that the
rising concerns about the future of ranching in the West provided
a potential policy backdrop for Center fieldwork. The quest for a
site narrowed to Nevada, and then, in consultation with Nevada
university colleagues, to an old and multi-ethnic ranching
community in the north-central part of the state, Paradise Valley.

Paradise Valley was the first Center project that stretched
fieldwork beyond a single season. It also became the first project
to include extensive documentation with 16-mm film. The principal
ethnographic subject of the motion picture film was a trail drive
bringing cattle from the mountains down to the home ranch of Les
Stewart in the valley. Stewart was himself a close observer of
tradition who had documented traditional ranching practices on 16-
mm film in the 1940s and often provided his own narration when he
screened the film for 4-H classes and other groups. Carl
Fleischhauer responded with a strategy of documentary
collaboration: he not only recorded Stewart's contemporary
narrations for the older films but showed him sequences of the
newly shot footage and filmed his insider's commentary on the
buckaroo arts captured therein.

Despite the Center's emphasis on the importance of planning
products for each project, the Paradise Valley work was begun
without a clear product in mind. As it turned out, it has been one
of the most product-rich Center efforts. That was a time when
exhibitions attracted a great deal of energy within our field and
in Washington. Howard W. Marshall, the Center's project director,
had persuaded Smithsonian colleague Richard Ahlborn to join the
field team, and soon a plan was afoot to produce an exhibit
featuring their work. The final result was an unusual
collaboration: the Smithsonian's National Museum of American
History presented the exhibit _Buckaroos in Paradise_, and the
Library published the companion volume of the same title.
 In 1983 the Center produced a comprehensive exhibition on _The
American Cowboy_, and the section on contemporary cowboy life
featured the Paradise Valley collection again. President Reagan
presided over the opening of the exhibition in the Library's new
Madison Gallery. One of the highlights of the exhibition, an
interactive display using a videodisc produced by Carl
Fleischhauer, presented the film sequences shot with Les Stewart
and his hands in Paradise Valley. It marked the first use of what
are now referred to as "new technologies" for public presentation
by the Library.

After the exhibition, the Center took the technology a step
farther, publishing a double-sided videodisc with a lengthy booklet
entitled _The Ninety-Six Ranch_. The title names Les Stewart's
ranch, and the disc features his ranch both today and through his
1940s film. In fact, the publication encompasses more than a single
ranch; it is a multimedia encyclopedia of Paradise Valley in film,
photograhy, and recorded sound. Over a decade later, another facet
of the project--the architecture of Paradise Valley, with special
attention to the traditional Italian stonemasonry dotting the
valley and the West generally--received attention in Howard W.
Marshall's book _Paradise Valley, Nevada: the People and Buildings
of an American Place_ (1995). Perhaps the Paradise Valley
collection will next appear online, continuing its productive
history as a documentary collection into the next century.

Cultural Conservation

The Blue Ridge and Paradise Valley projects both drew the Center
into the array of cultural issues associated with what is sometimes
called "land-use planning." In addition, the Blue Ridge project was
the first of a series of collaborations between the Folklife Center
and the National Park Service. The second was not so successful.

In 1979 the Center was approached by Park Service officials
regarding the possibility of mounting a research, programming, and
planning effort in the counties along the Tennessee-Tombigbee
Waterway. The waterway, which was already under construction, was
to run through northeastern Mississippi and southwestern Alabama,
connecting the Tennessee River with Mobile Bay. Funds were
available through the Department of the Interior to conduct what
are termed "mitigation" efforts to counteract any adverse impacts
of the project on the region's cultural resources. "Cultural
resources" were generally understood to consist of historic and
archeological sites; the Center saw the project as an opportunity
to broaden the concept to include living cultural traditions. But
though construction was already underway, part of the project was
not yet funded. Some environmentalists continued to oppose it, and
the Center found itself drawn into controversy within the field of
folklore and folklife studies about whether accepting mitigation
funds lent support to a public works project the ultimate fate of
which was not yet determined. In the end, the Center withdrew. But
the withdrawal did not signal the end of either the Center's
involvement with the National Park Service or its exploration of
the connections between living cultural traditions and the large
family of activities and issues involving historic preservation,
natural conservation, and land management. In fact, a new
opportunity presented itself within a year.

Federal historic preservation responsibilities, which comprise an
important cluster of cultural programs and activities, are managed
principally within the National Park Service in the Department of
the Interior. In 1980 the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs
of the House of Representatives began consideration of a bill
amending the National Historic Preservation Act, which is perhaps
the most important piece of national legislation dealing with
historic preservation. An early draft of the new legislation
included a clause calling for a study of the relationship between
living cultural traditions and the preservation responsibilities of
the federal government.

I immediately got in touch with House Interior Committee staffer
Loretta Neumann to discuss the clause. In the ensuing months, the
Center was an active ingredient in the parleys, negotiations, and
hearings that characterize the course of a bill through the
Congress. In the end, the clause remained essentially intact:

The Secretary [of the Interior], in cooperation with the American
Folklife Center of the Library of Congress shall, within two years
after the enactment of this Act, submit a report to the President
and the Congress on preserving and conserving the intangible
elements of our cultural heritage, such as arts, skills, folklife,
and folkways.  The report shall take into account the view of other
public and private organizations, as appropriate.  This report
shall include recommendations for legislative and administrative
actions by the Federal government in order to preserve, conserve,
and encourage the continuation of the diverse traditional
prehistoric, historic, ethnic and folk cultural traditions that
underlie and are a living expression of our American heritage. 
(National Historic Preservation Act Amendments of 1980, Title III,
Section 502)

The bill passed in the waning days of the 96th Congress, with the
Carter administration departing and the new Reagan administration
preparing to arrive. Washington waited for the dust to settle, but
early in 1981 I met with Bennie C. Keel, departmental consulting
archeologist for the Department of the Interior, and we resolved to
collaborate in fulfilling the mandate provided by the new
legislation. The proposed study needed a fulltime coordinator, so
Ormond Loomis was borrowed from the Florida Folklife Program. A
committee of independent consultants was constituted from the
fields of folklore and folklife, anthropology, archeology, and
historic preservation, and the drafting of the report began.

Exactly how the title of the final report came to be is a little
mysterious. But it was clear to many of us that "intangible
elements of our cultural heritage" would not suffice. The term
"intangible" (which came from the world of archeology and historic
preservation, where tangible culture is the focal subject) is
problematic in that it defines something by what it is not.
Further, there was a strong sentiment within the Center staff--
corroborated by our independent consultants--for making the report
deal with the entire system of working with culture, not just a
portion of it.

These matters must have been on our minds one day when a group of
Center staff convened to discuss the report (still at an early
stage of preparation) with Ormond Loomis. The question arose about
giving the report a stronger, more positive title. A few words and
phrases were kicked around. Then someone said "cultural
conservation"; none of us can now remember how it came up, or from
whom. We all murmured the phrase, then looked at each other. Our
new phrase was positive and focused; it provided an umbrella under
which the various disciplines concerned with cultural action could
unite; it chose a noun that resonated with the dynamic ecological
models of natural conservation, as opposed to the static images of
freeze-frame preservation; and finally, it alliterated. The phrase
stuck, and _Cultural Conservation_ was the title of the final
report. Today, more than a decade later, the term has a life of its
own and is cited by scholars and cultural specialists from many
fields as a descriptive banner for their collective mission.

The Center's next project, in the Pine Barrens of southern New
Jersey, carried the concept of cultural conservation a major step
farther. The _Cultural Conservation_ report had sought to bring
into a working relationship all the key professional fields of
cultural endeavor--folklore and folklife studies, archeology,
historic preservation, and planning. But though the study
appropriated the term conservation, the report did not give as much
attention as it might have to the world of natural conservation,
ecology, and environmental research. The Pinelands Folklife Project
remedied that earlier neglect.

The Pine Barrens of South Jersey were the subject of much
environmental discussion in the 1970s and early 1980s, culminating
in legislation creating the Pinelands National Reserve to protect
the special environment of the region, from its pristine aquifer
through its endemic species and archeological and historic
treasures. The Reserve was to be managed, not as a park or
wilderness set-aside, but as a dynamic environment where people had
always lived and would continue to live. The Pinelands Commission,
made up of representatives from federal, state, and local
governments, would manage the gradual and orderly development of
the region to ensure that its unique features are not obliterated
by suburban development, industrialization, and other forces.

The Commission promptly sponsored research on everything from the
endemic species to the archeological and historic sites of the Pine
Barrens, in order to factor knowledge of "natural and cultural
resources" into a long-range planning process. But somehow no one
thought to study the living cultural traditions of the region
today. The Center's Pinelands Folklife Project, launched in 1983
under the direction of Center staffer Mary Hufford with assistance
from several state agencies, sought to correct that oversight.

The Pinelands Folklife Project was broad in its sweep, and it
probed the interstices of what are normally thought of as "nature"
and "culture." It is not surprising that the fieldwork revealed a
connection between the natural resources and the cultural
traditions of the region. What is surprising is the depth of that
connection. Some "natural resources," like white cedar, have been
managed by human tending throughout the historical era--making them
as much cultural as natural resources. Some endemic species seem to
owe their existence to the periodic burning of the land, which has
been going on at the hands of humans since prehistoric times.
Contemplating the Pine Barrens, it is hard to say precisely where
culture leaves off and nature begins.

The project had two tasks: to make recommendations to the Pinelands
Commission about incorporating project findings into long-range
planning, and to share the findings more broadly with the general
public--including especially the people of the region. The first
product was _One Space, Many Places: Folklife and Land Use in New
Jersey's Pinelands National Reserve_. Designed as a report to the
Pinelands Commission, it fulfilled the first task and contributed
to the second as well. It has been a popular volume within the
region and has also found its way into classrooms and onto
planners' desks as a model for dealing with similar issues in other
regions. But something more was called for to fulfill what the
Center took to be its public mandate. Happily, the project had
stirred great interest among various New Jersey agencies, and the
New Jersey Historical Society, New Jersey Council on the Arts, and
New Jersey State Museum eventually collaborated in a major
exhibition and companion book, both entitled _Pinelands Folklife_
and both drawing heavily on the fieldwork of the Center and the
vision of the Center's project director, Mary Hufford. Among the
visitors to the exhibition at the state museum in Trenton were
thousands of citizens of the Pinelands, excited and, we hope,
empowered by the public evocation of their traditions and way of
life.

A 1985 project in Utah permitted the Center to experiment further
with the connections and compatibility between folklife and
historic preservation. The Grouse Creek Cultural Survey focused on
a single community in northwestern Utah. Its field team was
composed of folklorists, historians, and architectural historians
representing several Utah cultural agencies. Its goal was simply to
demonstrate to historic preservation offices that a
multidisciplinary field team would yield a deeper, fuller portrait
of the salient cultural features of a community--in this case, a
community of Mormon buckaroo traditions, lying on a cultural fault
line between the Mormon farming belt and the ranching traditions of
the Great Basin.

The Park Service Connection

Cultural conservation as a working concept has had many facets for
the Folklife Center. So has the Park Service connection. The Blue
Ridge Parkway Folklife Project connected with the National Park
Service's management of national parks; the cultural conservation
study and the Grouse Creek Cultural Survey connected with a
different network of professionals, both within and outside of the
National Park Service, concerned with archeology and historic
preservation. The Center's next project, in Lowell, Massachusetts,
opened up yet another dimension of cultural conservation to be
explored with another network of professionals connected with the
Park Service--planners.

Lowell, as an early mill town, is prominent in the history of
American industry; it is perhaps less prominent as a multi-ethnic
contemporary city. Like other such cities, it was in economic
decline for much of the twentieth century, but it was blessed by
community leaders who united to begin planning the town's renewal.
The planning led to the creation of Lowell National Historical
Park, and it also led to the Lowell Historic Preservation
Commission, which was to work in coordination with the park but
embraced directly the broader goal of community redevelopment. The
Commission engaged the Folklife Center in a project to identify,
document, and plan programs addressing the ethnic and neighborhood
traditions of Lowell.

Lowell was not the Center's first urban project. It had begun with
an initiative in Chicago in 1977, and in 1979 it had undertaken a
folklife field survey of Rhode Island, a heavily urban state.
Center staffer Peter Bartis, who had worked on the Chicago project
and directed the Rhode Island effort, served as the key staffer for
Lowell. The project brought to the fore the relevance of folklife
to cultural planning for a city, just as the Pinelands project had
pressed for the inclusion of folklife in planning for a rural
region. Community cultural planning is a cornerstone in the
architecture of cultural conservation, as envisioned in the
Center's policy study of that title. From the mid-1980s on, a
number of Center field initiatives explored in fuller detail the
implications of the idea.

The Maine Acadian Cultural Survey of 1991, undertaken again at the
invitation of the National Park Service, assessed and documented
the cultural traditions of the St. John Valley in far northern
Maine. Center staffer David Taylor, himself a Maine native,
directed the project. Congress had passed legislation mandating
attention to Maine Acadian cultural heritage under the auspices of
the Park Service, and the survey's charge was to define the
boundaries and character of the region (a valley dominated by
Acadian French traditions), enumerate its prominent cultural
resources, and prepare a report laying the foundation for future
regional efforts. It is noteworthy that the Maine Acadian project
followed the precedent of the Grouse Creek Cultural Survey by
defining itself as a "cultural survey," not a "folklife survey."
The Maine legislation cited "folklore," but the Center found it
more important to show a reach and breadth of expertise, redefining
"cultural heritage" in the process, than to labor to assert the
importance and define the boundaries of "folklife."

Two projects in West Virginia, both directed by Mary Hufford,
continued the trends discernible in the Pinelands, Lowell, Grouse
Creek, and the St. John Valley. The first was the New River Gorge
Folklife Project, undertaken in conjunction with a Congressional
expansion of the New River Gorge National River (a national park).
Its report and recommendations dealt with a proposal to establish
a crafts and folklife center at a site within the park. The second,
entitled the Appalachian Forest Folklife Project, is exploring
traditional culture along West Virginia's Coal River with
particular attention to regional cultural knowledge and use of the
natural environment. In it, the Center finds itself in a mediating
role between scientists concerned about evidence of forest health
or sickness and local people who represent the only ample reservoir
of knowledge about the subject.

Finally, a recent project in Paterson, New Jersey, in connection
with an urban history initiative in New Jersey mandated by
congressional legislation and administered by the National Park
Service, has returned to the urban planning model exemplified by
the earlier Lowell project. The Paterson work, however, has shifted
from an ethnic emphasis, as in Lowell, to a focus on occupational
traditions in a city that, since the dawning of industrial America
in the late eighteenth century, has symbolized the importance of
manufacturing and the concomitant importance of labor and small
business skills and traditions.

From the New Jersey Pinelands on, these projects have explored a
new approach to fieldwork. The Center found itself working in a
world of planners and scientific surveyors, and its role has been
to mediate between planners and local citizens by providing models
through which local culture could be included in planning. Within
the National Park Service, the planners represent a new generation
of park professionals who have been gradually abandoning the
acquire-control-and-manage model for national parks and exploring
models for cooperation with local communities, operating on the
premise that local people should be enlisted, not evicted. Their
attitudes coincided with a clear trend in congressional legislation
toward a new kind of park unit that blurred park boundaries,
extolled partnership as a goal, sought cost-sharing with local and
state governmental units and the private sector, and envisioned the
living culture of citizens as a resource worth celebrating and
conserving.

Characteristics of Center Field Projects

Field projects, spanning as they have the entire first generation
of the Center's existence, have in a sense defined the Center, just
as field recording expeditions defined the great Lomax era of the
Archive. The Center's fieldwork ranged from documentation of folk
arts in the early years to immersion in community cultural planning
in the later years. Broadening of purpose has been a clear trend,
though the projects never lost sight of the power of expressive
culture to define community life and values. Curiously, the trend
within the Center's history parallels a noticeable broadening of
scope in the Archive from the mid-1930s on. Perhaps there is an
imbedded impulse in the professional occupation of folklore to
broaden scope.

Nevertheless, certain recurrent features may be called the
hallmarks of Center field projects, whether early or late:

* Use of teams working together in the field;
* Emphasis on professional documentation, including high-quality 
  sound recordings and professional photography;
* Attention to the full span of expressive culture in all forms;
* Interest in documenting the full range of everyday life;
* Development of publications, exhibitions, and other public 
  products from the fieldwork;
* Cooperation with other federal and state agencies;
* Involvement of local people in defining the thrust of fieldwork 
  and in developing plans and recommendations;
* Creation of large multi-format ethnographic collections as a 
  major product of the fieldwork;
* Creation of reference archives in regional repositories;
* Strengthening local capacity to continue the work in the future.

In a century that might fairly be described as the documentary
century, the idea of documenting and preserving culture through the
use of new technologies began the century in the realm of
scientific and artistic experimentation, and ended the century as
a mode of human intercourse so widely diffused as to become a
generalized cultural mechanism. In the late twentieth century,
documenting culture _is_ culture. If something is important, one
should take photographs, make sound recordings, or aim a
videocamera at it; next, by subtle inference, documenting it
symbolically affirms one's belief in its importance.

In this context, the Center has reflected, and at times
anticipated, the larger trends in cultural documentation in the
later decades of the century. Center field projects have both
broken new ground and continued a tradition of folklife field
documentation associated with the Library of Congress since early
in the century. In the process, the field projects also provided a
major infusion and caused a substantive transformation of the
Archive of Folk Culture, adding over a half million items in
various media to the Archive's collections.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Field Documentation Projects and Cultural Surveys
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chicago Ethnic Arts, April-July 1977
Coordinator: Elena Bradunas

South-Central Georgia Folklife, July-August 1977
Coordinator:  Howard W. Marshall

Paradise Valley Folklife, seasonal visits 1978-82
Coordinators: Howard W. Marshall and Carl Fleischhauer

Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife, July-September 1978
Coordinator: Carl Fleischhauer

Rhode Island Folklife Survey, July 15-December 31, 1979
Director: Kenneth S. Goldstein
Coordinator: Peter T. Bartis

Montana Folklife Survey, July 1-September 15, 1979
Director: Barre Toelken
Coordinator: Carl Fleischhauer

Ethnic Heritage and Language Schools, Spring 1982
Coordinator: Elena Bradunas

Pinelands Folklife, September-November 1983
Coordinators Sue Samuelson and Mary Hufford

Grouse Creek [Utah] Cultural Survey, summer 1985
Coordinator: Carl Fleischhauer

Lowell [Massachusetts] Folklife, June 1987-June 1988
Coordinators: Peter T. Bartis and Douglas DeNatale

Italian-American Folklife in the West, March 1989-October 1991
Coordinator: David A. Taylor

The Maine Acadian Cultural Survey, January 1991-January 1992
Project Director: David A. Taylor
Field Coordinator: C. Ray Brassieur

New River Gorge [West Virginia] Folklife, December 1991-May 1992
Coordinators Mary Hufford and Rita Moonsammy

Working in Paterson [New Jersey], summer 1994
Coordinator: David A. Taylor


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is hard to believe that it has been twenty years since I worked
at the Archive [of Folk Culture] as a volunteer . . . . I remember
feeling that I was working at the center of a large network of
colleagues. Every day someone interesting stopped by to look at
materials at the Archive, or wrote or called with a question. . . 
I also learned about "invisible colleges" though I did not yet know
the term. I discovered how important it is to maintain connections
with a wide variety of people who are separated geographically but
united by their interests. You were the center of that particular
invisible college--the Archive had information everyone wanted, and
you were always available to help people discover resources that
would enrich their projects.

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz
Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas
February 2, 1996


I interned at the Library during those golden years when each
intern received a stack pass. In the evenings, after the Archive
was closed, I used to sit in the stacks in front of the GRs or the
GNs, losing myself in folklore books . . . . In those evenings I
learned not only about folklore, but more importantly about the way
our culture preserves and organizes knowledge. . . . I learned to
be selective and find the best book on the subject, and how to edit
my research topics to a manageable scope. I learned--and I believe
Joe [Hickerson] pointed this out to me--that if I really wanted to,
and set my mind to it, I could write a book someday and get it
copywritten and it would wind up on these shelves, too. . . . I
always loved that Amy Lowell poem on the Library--didn't she say
something like, "Where but here are we Americans so symbolized?"
There was something so damned chaotic and democratic about the
whole thing, and for me, the Archive was the crowning glory of this
astonishing institution. . . . For many years they had sheltered
the Archive of Folk Music to preserve culture which didn't make it
into books, helping to fill at least some of the gaps in the
scholarly record. And the staff at the Archive treated a letter
which asked after the words to a song "my grandfather used to sing"
with the same courtesy as a letter from a noted scholar.

Kathleen Condon
Brooklyn Children's Museum
Brooklyn, New York
January 31, 1996


[The Archive of Folk Culture] holds a special place in my heart. I
discovered it somewhat by chance, as a high school student seeking
refuge from the daunting formality of the [Library's] Main Reading
Room. Years later I rediscovered the Archives as an intern.
Inspired and guided by Joe Hickerson and Gerry Parsons, I undertook
many tasks--filing, researching public inquires, transcribing field
recordings, answering phone calls. Each job became another entryway
into the treasures of American culture contained within the
Archives. Each accomplishment gave me a growing sense of
connectedness to the singers, collectors, and researchers who had
come before.

Harold A. Closter
National Museum of American History
Smithsonian Institution
January 30, 1996


We were really delighted to see the enormous works done by the
Library of Congress at Washington during our visit in August 1990.
The Folklife Center is no doubt a resource house of folklore of
this world. We would like to be associated with this center.

Sila Basak
Reader, Department of Bengali
Susilkar College,
University of Calcutta
May 31, 1991


[The American Folklife Center] not only houses unique collections
. . . it supports scholarship, research, education, and public
awareness of our vastly diverse traditional and folk cultures.
People all over the country depend upon the staff and collections
of the Center.

Paddy Bowman
Alexandria, Virginia
June 21, 1995


The American Folklife Center is, perhaps more than any other
organization in the country, the guardian of America's folk
culture. . . . All over America our regional communities, our local
music and dance forms are threatened by the awesome power of the
mass media. As Alan Lomax himself has written, "if we continue to
allow the erosion of our cultural forms, soon there will be nowhere
to visit and no place to truly call home."  The American Folklife
Center works with communities and ethnic groups to ensure that
their culture is documented for future generations and remains a
viable legacy for generations to come.

Steven Zeitlin
City Lore
New York, New York
June 21, 1995


The American Folklife Center is the heartbeat of efforts across the
nation, efforts made by people of very diverse ethnic groups and
walks of life, to conserve and transmit what is most vital in their
heritage. . . . The agency conserves and makes available to
scholars and to interested citizens priceless documents in our
nation's history--recordings, photographs, manuscripts--and brings
them alive through creative programming and outreach.

Harriet Feinberg
Cambridge, Massachusetts
June 26, 1995
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CAPTIONS

Cover: Fannie Lee Teals with her red, white, and blue Bicentennial
quilt. From the Center's South-Central Georgia Folklife Project,
1977. (6-17617-29a) Photo by Beverly J. Robinson

Linda Gantanaga, Howard W. Marshall, and Alan Jabbour discuss
fieldwork plans at a motel in Winnemucca, Nevada, 1978. Paradise
Valley Folklife Project. Photo by Carl Fleischhauer

Occupational folklife expert Archie Green stands beside "Mr. Dixie"
at Dixie Sheetmetal, Falls Church, Virginia, November 1995. In the
1970s, Green walked the halls of Congress to lobby for the creation
of the American Folklife Center. Photo by David A. Taylor

Board of Trustees Meeting, September 1, 1976. From left to right:
David Voight, Alan Jabbour, Wayland Hand, Daniel J. Boorstin, and
Elizabeth Hamer Kegan. Library of Congress photo

Center folklorist Elena Bradunas with Lithuanian weaver Kazys
Bartasius and his wife, Ida. Chicago Ethnic Arts Project, 1977.
Photo by Jonas Dovydenas

First Lady Rosalyn Carter visits the exhibit Folk Art and Folklife,
one product of the South-Central Georgia Folklife Project, at the
Library of Congress, January 1978. From left to right: Ruth
Boorstin; Amy Carter; Librarian Daniel J. Boorstin; Mrs. Carter;
and Michael Carrigan, the Library's exhibits officer. Library of
Congress photo

Four heads of the Archive of Folk Culture assembled for the
Archive's 50th anniversary celebration, November 16-17, 1978. From
left to right: Alan Jabbour, Rae Korson, Joseph C. Hickerson, and
Alan Lomax. Library of Congress Photo

Joseph C. Hickerson and Gerald E. Parsons, at the Archive of Folk
Culture, 1975, when it was still part of the Library's Music
Division. Photo by Carl Fleischhauer

Terry Eiler (with camera) and Bob Fulcher videotape Veoma and Josh
Easter, Surry County, North Carolina, as they peel apples for
drying with the assistance of field researcher Wally Macnow (left).
Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project, 1978. (BR8-16-20543-26) Photo
by Lyntha Scott Eiler

Korean dance students waiting to perform at a Silver Spring,
Maryland, nursing home, photographed for the Center's Ethnic
Heritage and Language Schools Project, 1981. The study of cultural
transmission as it takes place through regular, formal activities
grew out of the 1977 Chicago Ethnic Arts Project, where researchers
were struck by the number of activities organized for young people
by some of the city's ethnic communities. Photo by Lucy Long

Harvesting cranberries at Haines's bogs in Chatsworth, New Jersey.
Pinelands Folklife Project, 1983. Photo by Joseph Czarnecki

Sophia Pargas, on break, crochets at her work station in the
computer sub-assembly area, Wang Laboratories, Lowell
Massachusetts. Lowell Folklife Project, 1978. (LFP-TR-B392-3) Photo
by Tom Rankin

Folklorists Howard W. Marshall (left) and Ray Brassieur examine
furniture at the Fred Albert House, a typical mid-nineteenth
century Acadian house moved by the Madawaska Historical Society to
St. David Village, Maine. Maine Acadian Cultural Survey, 1991.
(MAP-DW-B017-17) Photo by David Whitman

Folklife specialist Mary Hufford with Randy Halstead, who buys and
sells ginseng grown in the Central Appalachian region, October
1995. Hufford interviewed Halstead for the Appalachian Forest
Folklife Project. Photo by Lyntha Scott Eiler

Folklife specialist David A. Taylor reviews color slides from the
Working in Paterson project, 1991. Photo by James Hardin, 1996

Lindy Boggs, Judith McCulloh, and Robert Malir, at the February
1996 meeting of the Board of Trustees of the American Folklife
Center. Boggs and Malir just completed their terms as board members
and were presented with duck decoys carved by Lennie Bercham;
McCulloh was elected the new chair of the board. Photo by David A.
Taylor

Documentary photographer Bill Smock filming a cattle drive,
Paradise Valley, Nevada, for the Paradise Valley Folklife Project,
1979. A list of American Folklife Center documentary field projects
and cultural surveys from the past twenty years appears on page   
(NV-4367-28) Photo by Carl Fleischhauer