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Spoken word materials online as a part of American Memory from the Library of Congress. Note: these are generally items running four minutes or less. Some are excerpted from longer recordings in the collections of the American Folklife Center at the Library.
The Nation's Forum Collection consists of fifty-nine sound recordings of speeches by American leaders from 1918-1920. The speeches focus on issues and events surrounding the First World War and the subsequent presidential election of 1920. Speakers include: Warren G. Harding, James Cox, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Samuel Gompers, Henry Cabot Lodge, and John J. Pershing. Speeches range from one to five minutes.
Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West
Virginia
incorporates 679 excerpts from original sound recordings and
1,256 photographs from the American Folklife Center's Coal River
Folklife Project (1992-99) documenting traditional uses of the
mountains in Southern West Virginia's Big Coal River
Valley. Functioning as a de facto commons, the mountains have
supported a way of life that for many generations has entailed
hunting, gathering, and subsistence gardening, as well as coal
mining and timbering. The online collection includes extensive
interviews on native forest species and the seasonal round of
traditional harvesting (including spring greens; summer berries
and fish; and fall nuts, roots such as ginseng, fruits, and
game) and documents community cultural events such as
storytelling, baptisms in the river, cemetery customs, and the
spring "ramp" feasts using the wild leek native to the
region. Interpretive texts outline the social, historical,
economic, environmental, and cultural contexts of community
life, while a series of maps and a diagram depicting the
seasonal round of community activities provide special access to
collection materials.
Includes brief oral interview excerpts, listed under the heading "Audio
Title" on the collection home page
Quilts and Quiltmaking in America showcases materials
from two American Folklife Center collections, the Blue Ridge
Parkway Folklife Project Collection (1978) and the "All-American
Quilt Contest" sponsored by Coming Home, a division of Lands'
End, and Good Housekeeping. Together these collections provide a
glimpse into America's diverse quilting traditions. The quilt
documentation from the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project, an
ethnographic field project conducted by the American Folklife
Center in cooperation with the National Park Service, includes
229 photographs and 181 recorded interviews with six quiltmakers
in Appalachian North Carolina and Virginia. These materials
document quilts and quilting within the context of daily life
and reflect a range of backgrounds, motivations, and aesthetic
sensibilities. The materials presented from the Lands' End
All-American Quilt Contest collection include images of
approximately 180 winning quilts from across the United
States. The collection represents a wide range of quiltmaking,
from highly traditional to innovative, and the quilts pictured
exhibit excellent design and technical skill in a variety of
styles and materials.
Includes brief oral interview excerpts, listed under the heading "Sound
Recordings" on the collection home page
The Buckaroos in Paradise Collection
presents documentation of a Nevada cattle-ranching community,
with a focus on the family-run Ninety-Six Ranch. The
documentation was largely the work of the Paradise Valley
Folklife Project (1978-1982), a research initiative conducted by
the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. This
collection presents 41 motion pictures and 28 sound recordings
that tell the story of life and work on the Ninety-Six Ranch and
of its cowboys, known in the region as buckaroos. Motion
pictures produced from 1945 to 1965 by Leslie Stewart, owner of
the Ninety-Six Ranch, are also included. An archive of 2,400
still photographs portrays the people, sites, and traditions on
other ranches and in the larger community of Paradise Valley,
home to persons of Anglo-American, Italian, German, Basque,
Swiss, Northern Paiute Indian, and Chinese heritage. About 2,200
of these photographs were made during the folklife project and
about 200 photographs date from 1870 to 1958. Background texts
provide historical and cultural context for this distinctive
Northern Nevada ranching community.
Includes oral interview excerpts. These are listed within the general
menu on the collection home page
The International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) was established in 1969 in Amsterdam to function as a medium for international co-operation between archives that preserve recorded sound and audiovisual documents. More than 400 members from more than 60 countries represent a broad palette of audiovisual archives which are distinguished by their focus on particular subjects and areas: e.g. archives for all sorts of musical recordings, historic, literary, folkloric and ethnological sound documents, theatre productions and oral history interviews, bio-acoustic, environmental and medical sounds, linguistic and dialect recordings as well as those for forensic purposes.
The Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to research, study, publication, and information exchange surrounding all aspects of recordings and recorded sound. With over one thousand members from twenty-three countries, the organization is comprehensive in scope.