Down the Rabbit Hole

I've finally made it back home. With that, I am once again at full internet speed with a larger computer. What does that mean? It means I will no longer have to wait 4-8 hours to upload photos, which will make this whole blog thing much easier to manage.

So expect some post-adventuring posts to show up over the next few weeks. Today I thought I'd share a little bit of my overall experience working in the American Folklife Center itself...



This is the Adams Building, where all the magic happened. It was here that I worked on different projects for the LOC-AFC (that's Library of Congress American Folklife Center).

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It's a gorgeous building, with art and architecture in the Art Deco style. It's very different from the original Jefferson Building, which takes after a classical European style. I came to love the designs--especially all of the owls in the main reading room.

That window...second up and five from the right...that's where I spent most of my week. I loved the view from my desk. I had the only desk facing a window, so I was able to see all the people walking by, as well as the dome of the Jefferson. I caught some pretty impressive rain storms.

So what did I do there? I'm glad you asked. Here's a little som'm, som'm I wrote up for the Folklore Department newsletter:

On average, the Library of Congress receives 6,000 items a day to be sorted, catalogued, and archived. You can imagine, then, there is a constant influx of manuscripts, photographs, sound recordings, moving images, and various artifacts that make up “the stuff” found in the myriad projects and collections throughout the buildings and warehouses.

The American Folklife Center is only one section of the Library, and its goal is to collect and preserve living culture. It houses one of the largest collections of ethnographic materials in the world. As an intern, it was my job to help manage “the stuff” of three collections: Local Legacies, International Storytellers, and Voices of Civil Rights.

The Local Legacies project was created in 2000, in celebration of the Library of Congress Bicentennial. The Library asked each state to send information about local customs and celebrations—something unique to that particular region of the United States. The items in the collection have been sorted and catalogued, but the Center does not have a complete container list for the manuscripts, and had no accessible list for moving images and sound recordings. I spent the first half of each week creating these lists and was able to itemize 13 boxes of manuscripts, 38 boxes of moving images, and 642 sound recordings (audio cassettes and cds). Prior to the creation of these lists, it would take librarians a good amount of time to find the item a researcher requested. At the end of the summer, however, a librarian was able to locate a moving image for a researcher in less than two minutes, which was a tremendous help as the researcher was only able to be in DC for the day. Creating those lists felt monotonous at times, but I left feeling proud that I was able to directly help someone find the information they needed when it was needed.

The inventory lists for Local Legacies was in the collection’s final stages. However, the AFC agreed to house the International Storytellers collection as a new acquisition. The Center received quite a large amount of boxes from the organization; most of which have never been opened. I was able to help in the very first steps of this collection by rehousing “the stuff.” I sorted through fliers, programs, photographs, slides, CDs, cassettes, books, artifacts—each box a surprise. It was my job to go through the items and decide how to group them together in a more manageable way. It was a messy job at times, but it was interesting to learn how important those first steps are in creating a workable collection.

My favorite part of the week, though, was working with the Voices of Civil Rights project. In 2004, AARP (working with the Library) toured the United States recording interviews with people who wanted to tell their Civil Rights experience. My job was to listen to these sound recordings and write little blurbs detailing the important dates, names, and events in each interview. The Library hopes to create a searchable database of these interviews, and these descriptions will help researchers sort through the thousands of recordings in order to find only those pertaining to their topic. These stories were devastating, moving, and extraordinary. I learned more about the Civil Rights Movement in those interviews than I have in my entire educational experience. I was able to listen to 300 interviews and was amazed at the painful experiences these people went through. I was more amazed, though, at the level of hope and joy expressed over and over again. It was an experience for which I will always be grateful.

Working in the Library of Congress was like wandering through my own little corner of Wonderland. It was at times intimidating, thrilling, beautiful, and utterly surreal. Hopefully one day I’ll have the opportunity to wander through again.