What is Folklife???
If you have been to the Kentucky Folklife Festival held here in Frankfort, every September for the last decade you may know a thing or two about the Kentucky Folklife Program. The mission of the program is to identify, document, present and conserve the Commonwealth’s diverse cultural traditions, generally referred to as folklife. The Kentucky Folklife Program acts to facilitate lifelong cultural education and maximize learning and research opportunities for Kentuckians through workshops, grants and traveling exhibits. Over the last two decades, a team of Folklorists here at KHS have documented the traditions, culture and heritage of the great state of Kentucky. I was recently hired under a National Historic Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) grant as the Project Archivist to process the Kentucky Folklife Program Collection. My job is to help organize the programs records and documentation that they have produced.
My first task when I took on this project was to inventory the collection, to see what types of materials and how many materials I would be processing. Since I began the project this past November I have gone through over 200 cubic feet of materials. Roughly 3 months of inventorying this extensive collection. The collection is made up of a wide array of materials including but not limiting: paper records, electronic records, photographs, floppy disks, mini DVs, cassette tapes, VHS, CDs and more! These materials are the documentation that has been produced since the Kentucky Folklife Program began in 1989 in Berea, KY. Everything from administrative records such as grant applications for the Apprenticeship program and Community Scholars program to actual field notes which can comprise of notes, photographs, slides, negatives, sound recordings and video (with decades of changing formats). Although this is a challenging project, I am very excited to learn more about the Bluegrass state and some of the culture and traditions that are treasured here.
Many people may think of bluegrass music and tobacco farming when it comes to the Folklife of Kentucky; however, the Kentucky Folklife Program has researched and surveyed a wide spectrum of folks and cultural ways that can describe Kentucky. Within the collection I have found records on bluegrass and tobacco farming, but I have also found documentation on BBQ, Burgoo, Kentucky Derby Hats, Mammoth Cave, Basket making, and Story telling. Even documentation of immigrant communities that have settled here in Kentucky over the years including: German, Chinese, Latino, Indian and Bosnian. The Folklorists have traveled to close to 50 counties (still counting) across the state of Kentucky to document how Kentuckians live. Even some big names such as Eddie Pennington, Ricky Skaggs, Sam Bush, and Folklorist Mike Seeger, have appeared throughout the collection.
Now that I have a better grasp of the quantity of materials that makes up the collection the next step is to begin piecing the puzzle together. My job is to gather and organize all of the materials based on projects and if you can believe it I have discovered close to 200 projects so far. It has been estimated that there could be close to 400 total projects that the Kentucky Folklife Program has actually been a part of. As I begin to piece together the large number of projects the Folklife Department has produced/participated in, my other goal is to evaluate the archival materials. Part of my job is to create an Assessment Tool to be used to evaluate the archival materials and to note what will still need to be done for the future. Since the collection contains a wide variety of materials I had to gather from multiple assessment tools that other archival repositories use and create one that would work for this collection specifically. After doing research on methods of assessment and discovering a plethora of documents, I was able to create an evaluation form for the collection by merging several other repository's forms together. The evaluation form will contain the project name, quantity of materials within each project, a check list for types of materials as well as several pages to evaluate storage conditions and material conditions. For every project that the Kentucky Folklife Program has created or participated in, it will have its own evaluation form. These forms will be helpful for the future archivists who will work with the collection and to assist them with looking more closely into preservation needs of the collection as a whole. In the end I am trying to preserve the hard work that has been done to document the people and cultural ways of Kentuckians, in hopes that researchers can use the materials in the future.
"People must know the past to understand the present and face the future."—Nellie McClung
--Archivist Heather Stone
p.s. The Kentucky Folklife Program will be hosting the next Community Scholar Training Session at the Center for African American Heritage in Louisville, KY, March 12-April 23, 2012. If you or anyone you know are interested please see flyer: Download Community Scholars_Louisville. For more information you can contact Amanda Hardeman--(502) 564-1792 ext. 4555 or amanda.hardeman@ky.gov. The program welcomes anyone to apply, regardless of age or cultural background. The more diversity the better!
*Video and photographs were provided by the Kentucky Historical Society.
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