Related Online Resources

Through blog posts, podcasts and videos presentations of public programs and concerts, you can learn more about the American Folklife Center's collections directly from folklorists, specialists, and performers.

Folklife Today Blog

Folklife Today is a blog for people interested in folklore, folklife, and oral history. The blog features brief articles on folklife topics, highlighting the unparalleled collections of the Library of Congress, especially the American Folklife Center and the Veterans History Project.

View ALL Folklife Today Blog Posts

Highlighted Blog Post

The highlighted blog posts below focus on the topic of “occupational folklife.”

AFC Launches Season 2 of America Works
The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress continues to bring voices of workers throughout the country to listeners with the second season of our “America Works” podcast. Each 10-minute episode of “America Works” introduces listeners to an individual worker whose first-person narrative adds to the wealth of our shared national experience. The first episode is now available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and at loc.gov/podcasts. Subsequent episodes will be released each Thursday through June 3, 2021. (Folklife Today: April 15, 2021)

American Folklife Center Podcasts

Discover the treasures of the Library through its experts and special guests. Find full podcast series produced by the American Folklife Center by following the links below.

Folklife Today Podcast Series
Folklife Today tells stories about the cultural traditions and folklore of diverse communities, combining brand-new interviews and narration with songs, stories, music, and oral history from the collections of the Library of Congress's American Folklife Center.
America Works Podcast Series
America Works, an ongoing podcast series from the Library of Congress, features the voices of contemporary workers from throughout the United States talking about their lives, their workplaces, and their on-the-job experiences. Drawn from hundreds of longer oral history interviews collected by fieldworkers for the American Folklife Center’s Occupational Folklife Project (OFP), America Works is a testament to the wisdom, wit, knowledge, and dedication of today’s working Americans. These engaging oral histories, which have are preserved in the American Folklife Center’s archive, are enriching and expanding America’s historical record.

Highlighted Podcasts

The selected podcasts below focus on the topic of “occupational folklife” in the American Folklife Center collections.

Jennifer Sgro, Nurse Practitioner, Night Ministry Bus. Chicago, Illinois (America Works series)
This episode features Nurse Practitioner Jennifer Sgro, who works with The Night Ministry in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1976, The Night Ministry provides housing and healthcare to people who are homeless or who are living in low income situations. Sgro talks about providing healthcare on the Ministry’s Outreach Bus, which travels to a different low-income Chicago neighborhood every evening. In this thoughtful interview with documentarian Margaret Miles, Nurse Sgro talks about her job, her career, her clients, and the satisfaction she finds in her work.
Barbara Miller Byrd, Circus Owner. Hugo, Oklahoma (America Works series)
Barbara Miller Byrd, the third-generation owner of the Carson and Barnes Circus based in the small town of Hugo, Oklahoma, talks about growing up in the traveling circus founded by her grandparents more than 75 years ago. She shares great memories and stories and offers in-sights into the colorful and complex occupations that are needed to sustain a traveling circus in contemporary America.

Public Programs

Since its inception in 1976, the American Folklife Center has routinely hosted public programs at the Library of Congress in the form of concerts, lectures, panels, and symposia. From 2006 on, most of these public programs have been video recorded and made available online.

Playlists and Series

There are a number of playlists available on the YouTube page that gather videos from certain seasons of our Homegrown Concert series External or pull together various lectures as a sampler External of the types of topics covered. You can also simply search "folklife" on the YouTube page External to pull up hundreds of videos.

It is also possible to view entire series of American Folklife Center videos on the Library's website. Those links are provided below. Many (if not all) of the same videos can be found on the Library's YouTube channel.

Homegrown Concerts and artist oral histories
Over 200 videos of Homegrown concerts and oral history interviews with artists, dating back to 2005. The concerts take place in the Library's Coolidge Auditorium, Whittall Pavilion, Madison Hall, or a setting of the artists' choosing (largely from 2020 through 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic).
Benjamin Botkin lecture series
Videos from lectures, panels, and symposia that AFC has hosted over the years. The earliest videos are from 2005, and go on up through the most recent events.

Highlighted Public Program

The dangers and difficulties of certain challenging occupations are sometimes expressed in the tradition of composing and reciting poems, often in the traditional ballad form of rhymed couplets. This tradition, best-known in the cowboy poetry of the American West, also occurs among other occupational groups and is still found among workers in the Pacific Northwest such as loggers, commercial fishers, and miners. Jens Lund introduces the fisher and logger poetry genres and discusses their content, style and context with examples. (Event date: September 12, 2013)

Occupational Folklife: Resources in the American Folklife Center

American Folklife Center: Ask a Librarian