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 Hebrew school in Nashville, Tennessee.

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 William S. Leventhal and Alfred Moldovan. Leventhal discusses how his childhood experiences informed his later activism, while Moldovan remembers growing up in the Bronx and the influence of his parents, who were Jewish Hungarian immigrants.

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 Jewish Americans include “The Green Book: Documenting African American Entrepreneurs” which is available to research through this online presentation. This collection includes sound recordings, video recordings, photographs, interview logs and transcriptions of oral history interviews documenting contemporary businesses through the United States that were listed in the historically significant Green Book travel guide published between 1937 and 1967.

The World War II Rumor Project collection contains manuscript materials compiled by the Office of War Information (OWI). The OWI was established by an Executive order on June 13, 1942, for the purpose of achieving a coordinated governmental war information program. The information program was designed to promote an informed and intelligent understanding of the status and progress of the war effort, war policies, activities, and aims of the United States government. All functions of the Office of Facts and Figures and of the Office of Government Reports, and parts of the functions and related records of two other agencies were transferred to the OWI. For the World War II Rumor Project, field representatives collected information from community-based correspondents and sent duplicate or triplicate copies of reports of the correspondents to Dr. Eugene Horowitz at the Bureau of Public Inquiries of the OWI. The reports listed rumors and anecdotes that were compiled by Dr. Horowitz and William H. Webber arranged in alphabetical order by states and by subjects. Subjects include Adolf Hitler, Japan, rationing, and rhymes and stories composed or recorded by students. This collection contains historical materials that are products of their particular times, including offensive language and negative stereotypes.

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.

By Adam Silvia, Prints and Photographs Division. Journey across the Middle East with English photographer Francis Frith. This presentation includes 19th century photography and written testimony from Sinai and Palestine, a photographically illustrated book by Frith at the Library of Congress.

By Edward Wang and Michelle Stefano, American Folklife Center. An interactive map and multimedia exploration of community cultural centers in 1977 Chicago and today, including the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership.