The largest archive of ethnographic materials in the United States, the American Folklife Center (AFC) houses a collection of more than one million pieces, including manuscripts, sound recordings, photographs, video tapes, and a wide range of ephemera. The Polish American community is amply represented among AFC holdings. Much of this material is the result of fieldwork conducted in Polish communities across the United States and Canada. A notable example of such fieldwork was the Chicago Ethnic Arts Project, conducted in 1977. The project collected extensive data on more than 20 ethnic groups in the Chicago area and focused on folk music, dancing, crafts, and performers. Polish subjects account for a large share of the field notes, the 335 sound recordings, the 3,700 color transparencies, and the 300 rolls of black-and-white film that came out of the project. Over the years, the AFC has brought many ethnic music and dance groups to perform at the Library, and photographs of their live performances can be viewed, e.g., Chicago's Highlanders performing at the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress in January 1977.
The American Folklife Center was created in 1976 by the U.S. Congress to "preserve and present American folklife" through programs of research, documentation, archival preservation, reference service, live performance, exhibitions, publications, and training. Designated by the U.S. Congress as the national center for folklife documentation and research, the American Folklife Center continues to collect and document living traditional culture, while preserving for the future its unparalleled collections in the state-of-the-art preservation facilities of the Library of Congress.
