The Chicago Ethnic Arts Project survey was conducted in 1977 by the American Folklife Center at the request of the Illinois Arts Council to assess and document the status of living traditions, practices, and expressions in more than twenty cultural communities in Chicago, and was jointly sponsored by both organizations. The collection consists of approximately 344 sound recordings, 14,141 photographs, 269 folders of manuscript materials, including field notes, among other materials collected during the field survey. Documented food-related traditions include citywide restaurants, fishing on Lake Michigan, cultural and religious ceremonies involving meals, as well as a Japanese tea ceremony, among others.

The Ethnic Heritage and Language Schools in America Project was conducted in 1982 by the American Folklife Center to survey selected religious and secular ethnic community-based schools conducted, at least in part, in a language other than English to document the continued ethnolinguistic and cultural diversity of the United States. The collection consists of field notes, interviews, curriculum materials, sound recordings, photographs, and one videorecording resulting from a survey conducted by the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress in 1982 which documented 23 ethnic schools in the United States. Fieldwork was conducted at various locations including the First Korean School in Silver Spring, Maryland, the Senshin Buddhist Church of Los Angeles, and the Chinese School of San Antonio, Texas.

On May 12, 2009, the U. S. Congress authorized a national initiative by passing The Civil Rights History Project Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-19). The law directed the Library of Congress (LOC) and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) to conduct a national survey of existing oral history collections with relevance to the Civil Rights movement to obtain justice, freedom and equality for African Americans and to record and make widely accessible new interviews with people who participated in the struggle. The project was initiated in 2010 with the survey and with interviews beginning in 2011. Two such interviews include those with David Mercer Ackerman and Satoko Ito Ackerman, and Ceciia Suyat Marshall, Thurgood Marshall's widow and former NAACP staffer who discusses the moment their office learned they had won the landmark case of Brown v Board of Education.

The Occupational Folklife Project (OFP) began in 2010 as a multi-year project by the American Folklife Center to document the culture of contemporary workers during an era of economic and social transition. To date, fieldworkers across the country have recorded more than 900 audio and audiovisual oral history interviews with workers in scores of trades, industries, crafts, and professions. OFP collections related to Asian Americans include "Finding Roots: Asian American Farmers in Contemporary America: Archie Green Fellows Project, 2020-2021" and "Recent immigrant workers in Iowa's meatpacking industry Archie Green Fellows Project, 2015-2016."

The Montana Folklife Survey was conducted in the summer of 1979 by the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress, in cooperation with the Montana Arts Council. The survey was a field research project to document traditional folklife in Montana. The collection consists of approximately 145 sound recordings, 10,500 photographs; and 3 ½ linear feet of manuscripts that document interviews with Montanans in various occupations, various folk and traditional music occasions, storytelling and other reminiscences and stories about life in Montana in 1979. Included in this collection are recordings of the Nagashima family discussing Japanese and Japanese American foodways and traditions.

The Lowell Folklife Project was conducted in 1987-1988 as a cooperative project of the American Folklife Center and the Lowell Historic Preservation Commission, with support from the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, to document contemporary ethnic neighborhoods, occupations, and community life related to the history of industrialization in Lowell, Massachusetts. This year-long study yielded an ethnographic collection consisting of 196 hours of sound recordings covering a wide range of subjects and activities, including oral history interviews, religious services and festivals including a Cambodian Buddhist wedding ceremony as well as Cambodian and Laotian New Year's celebrations.

Between the mid-1970s and the late-1990s, the American Folklife Center coordinated a series of field surveys across the United States. Many of these projects occurred with the help of partner organizations at the federal or state level, and were intended to generate significant bodies of cultural documentation that could serve multiple purposes. Fieldworkers included AFC staff as well as specialists in various fields that the AFC contracted for the duration of a given project. This interactive Story Map guides visitors across the country from east to west, visiting each online field survey collection. Featured collection materials include recorded music from the Lowell Folklife Project Collection. View the Story Map to listen to Cambodian American musicians at home in a series of recordings from September 1987.

By Michelle Stefano and Nancy Groce, American Folklife Center. This Story Map explores the American Folklife Center's Occupational Folklife Collections, which focus on documenting people's work cultures ("occupational folklife") across the U.S.