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, exhibitions, publications, and training. The American Folklife Center Archive, established in the Library of Congress Music Division in 1928, is now one of the largest archives of ethnographic materials from the United States and around the world.
The American Folklife Center contains primarily audio recordings with a few video recordings and a small amount of manuscript material associated with specific collections. The AFC collections include traditional arts, cultural expressions, and oral histories, as well as offering researchers access to songs, stories, and other creative expressions of people from diverse communities.
The best place to start your research at the AFC is the LOC online catalog, with your search limited to only the Collections of the American Folklife Center
For members of Tribal Nations, we recommend you start your search terms with your community name or affiliation, as well as your community’s language or dialect. Be sure to try different spellings if applicable, as things may be cataloged in a variety of ways, some of which may be outdated. If the AFC has material attributed to your community, searching by name will usually bring up at least some search results. Searching by names of linguists and/or anthropologists who may have been in your community or area as well as the names of community members who may have recorded song, dance, or speaking may also bring up search results.
While the AFC collections may seem extensive, there is actually a good amount of Native material scattered throughout a variety of collections, ranging from language material to song and dance. Over the years the AFC has worked hard to organize their material by tribal community, which thankfully makes it a (mostly) straightforward process to identify potentially relevant material.
Once you have conducted a preliminary online catalog search, we highly recommend you get in touch with an AFC reference archivist. As of September 2022, Judith Gray is the reference archivist that specializes in Native American collections. She has a wealth of knowledge of all the Native material and will likely be the most helpful in identifying potentially relevant material.
Additional resources the AFC offers to researchers are the “Many Nations” publication (see above for details), the Federal Cylinder Project (FCP) reference books, and a host of reference material located in the on-site reading room in the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress.
It is also important to note that the AFC provides in-house digitization at no cost for Native communities and individuals.
In terms of listening to the recordings, something to be aware of is that each recording will often contain multiple tracks, as well as multiple sides depending on the type of recording. As a result, you may need to spend some time with the recording to determine which track you are interested in. Sometimes these individual tracks are hard to identify, particularly if there is no indication or documentation of which track is which.
It’s also important to note that the quality of these audio recordings varies greatly. More often than not this has to do with the original way it was recorded (e.g. on a wax cylinder vs reel to reel) and there is little the AFC staff can do to remedy this. That being said, a recording must be digitized before it can be listened to. So it’s possible the quality may improve with digitization, although there is no guarantee. If you are interested in listening to a recording that is not yet digitized, let the AFC staff know and they will submit a digitization request on your behalf. Once the material is digitized, it can then be listened to via a listening cabinet in the reading room. This is particularly important to keep in mind if you are planning an in-person research visit to AFC.
A unique feature of the AFC is when collections were accessioned, manuscript material that accompanied the audio/visual material was separated from the recordings but retained by the AFC. In other divisions of the Library this is not the case, but for AFC it makes research much easier. However, the catalog record does not always indicate that a collection has accompanying manuscript material, so it is always good to check with the reference archivist just in case. If a collection does have manuscript material, it is a good idea to consult that as it may provide background information and context about the speakers, the recording itself, and the community it comes from.
- Will need a reader card
- Schedule appointment in advance
- Connect with the reference archivist before scheduling your research visit –this is vital as any audiovisual materials must be digitized before they can be viewed. While most materials are already digitized, if the material you are interested in is not, thee AFC staff will need to put in a digitization request on your behalf and digitization times vary. Also because for any audio material, the reference archivist will need to download it to a listening cabinet in advance of you visit. Also AFC reading room is small and can only accommodate a small amount of people at a time.
In the 80s(?) all sound recordings with identified Native content were transferred onto cassette tapes and physically returned to the identified tribal community. We recommend checking with both the AFC reference archivist and within your own community to see if a cassette tape was received.
The AFC is incredibly welcoming to all forms of communication and collaboration with tribal communities, no matter how big or small feedback or information may be. Please feel free to share any corrections, misattributions, or cultural knowledge with AFC staff. If you come for an in-person research visit you can let them know while you’re there, otherwise you can contact them directly via email.