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 Posts

The highlighted blog posts below focus on the topics of “public memory and collective experience.”

Speaking Out: LGBT Veterans
Megan Harris introduces a new exhibit on LGBT Veterans. (Folklife Today: July 27, 2016)
“People Who Stood Up”: Mississippi Women in the Civil Rights Movement
Catherine Turner discusses a selection of women interviewed as part of the Civil Rights History Project (Folklife Today: June 4, 2017)
A Million Vietnam Wars
Kerry Ward explores collections from the Vietnam War in the Veterans History Project. (Folklife Today: March 29, 2019)
AFC Is Acquiring the Archival Collections of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt
Read the press release about this important acquisition with photographs and videos from the event at which it was announced. Speakers include members of Congress, those who initiated the AIDS Memorial Quilt project, curators, and family members of those commemorated. (Folklife Today: November 20, 2019)
Freedom Summer 1964 – SNCC remembers
Folklorist Guha Shankar presents videos from a 2014 Library of Congress symposium, documented in a webcast, entitled Mississippi Freedom Summer 1964: Memory, Legacy & the Way Forward. (Folklife Today: February 24, 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 topics of public memory and collective experience in the American Folklife Center collections.

Civil Rights History Project
With the help of colleagues from the National Museum of African American History and Culture as well as AFC staff, Stephen Winick and John Fenn explore the collaborative collection known as the Civil Rights History Project. You’ll learn about the piece of Congressional legislation that mandated the project, as well as the various roles that the Smithsonian Institution and Library of Congress have played in generating and maintaining the collection. You’ll find out about some of the fieldwork behind the interviews, as well as the more technical concerns that run through a born-digital collection. And you’ll hear several interview clips from the collection, all chosen by guests on the episode.. (Folklife Today Series: February 25, 2019)
The Green Book and African American Travel with Candacy Taylorroject AIDS Memorial Quilt
This episode presents an interview with Candacy Taylor, whose latest project is documenting sites associated with the Negro Motorist Green Book, a travel guide for African Americans during the Jim Crow era. Taylor discusses the dangers inherent in travel for Black people during an era where racial discrimination was legal and open racism was common. She fills us in on the origins of the Green Book. (Folklife Today Series: February 25, 2021)

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 Programs

Ahead of World AIDS Day 2019, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Congressman John Lewis announced the future of the AIDS Memorial Quilt and its archives at a special ceremony at the Library of Congress. The National AIDS Memorial will become the new caretaker of the AIDS Memorial Quilt and NAMES Project programs. As part of the transition, the NAMES Project and the National AIDS Memorial have agreed to jointly gift care and stewardship of the Quilt's archival collections to the prestigious American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, making this collection available to all through the world's largest public library.

The role of orally transmitted ancestral memory in ongoing struggles to overcome past injustices is proving critical in the struggle for human rights, civil rights and justice. In this context, the presentation reflects on two path-breaking cases of recent public memorialization: the Moiwana Massacre, which took place in the Republic of Suriname, South America and the Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado. June 25, 2015.

Public Memory and Collective Experience: Resources in the American Folklife Center

American Folklife Center: Ask a Librarian