The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress was created by Congress in 1976 "to preserve and present American Folklife." The Center incorporates the Archive of Folk Culture, which was established at the Library in 1928 as a repository for American Folk Music. The Center and its collections have grown to encompass all aspects of folklore and folklife from this country and around the world. Library of Congress, Jefferson building The Library of Congress is the unofficial national library of the United States. ... The Congress of the United States is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States of America. ... 1976 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1928 was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Folklore is the ethnographic concept of the tales, legends, or superstitions current among a particular ethnic population, a part of the oral history of a particular culture. ...

The twentieth century has been called the age of documentation, and folklorists and other ethnographers have taken advantage of each succeeding technology, from Thomas Edison's wax-cylinder recording machine, invented in 1877, to the latest CD or digital audio equipment, in order to record the voices and music of many regional, ethnic, and cultural groups, in the United States and around the world. Much of this priceless documentation has been assembled and preserved in the American Folklife Center's Archive of Folk Culture, which founding head Robert W. Gordon, in 1928, called "a national project with many workers." As we enter the twenty-first century the American Folklife Center is working on the critical issues of digital preservation, Web access, and archival management. (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s The 20th century lasted from 1901 to 2000 in the Gregorian calendar (often from (1900 to 1999 in common usage). ... Thomas Alva Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman who developed many important devices. ... 1877 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... CD may stand for: compact disc Canadian Forces Decoration cash dispenser (at least used in Japan) CD LPMud Driver Centrum-Demokraterne (Centre Democrats of Denmark) certificate of deposit České dráhy (Czech Railways) Chad (NATO country code) Chalmers Datorförening (computer club of the Chalmers University of Technology) a 1960s Panhard race... Digital audio describes sound recording and reproduction systems which work by using a digital representation of the audio waveform. ... An ethnic group is a group of people who identify with one another, or are so identified by others, on the basis of a boundary that distinguishes them from other groups. ... 1928 was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ...

The collections of the American Folklife Center include Native American song and dance; ancient English ballads; the tales of "Bruh Rabbit," told in the Gullah dialect of the Georgia Sea Islands; the stories of ex-slaves, told while still vivid in the minds of those who endured one of the most harrowing periods of American history; an Appalachian fiddle tune that has been heard on concert stages around the world; a Cambodian wedding in Lowell, Massachusetts; a Saint Joseph's Day Table tradition in Pueblo, Colorado; Balinese Gamelan music recorded shortly before the Second World War; documentation from the lives of cowboys, farmers, fishermen, coal miners, shop keepers, factory workers, quilt makers, professional and amateur musicians, and housewives from throughout the United States; first-hand accounts of community events from every state; and international collections from every region of the world. Native Americans (also Indians, Aboriginal Peoples, American Indians, First Nations, Alaskan Natives, Amerindians, or Indigenous Peoples of America) are the indigenous inhabitants of The Americas prior to the European colonization, and their modern descendants. ... Gullah is the name of both an ethnic group and its English-African creole language. ... A monument celebrating the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire in 1834, erected in Victoria Tower Gardens, Millbank, Westminster, London Wiktionary has a definition of: Slavery Slavery can mean one or more related conditions which involve control of a person against his or her will, enforced by violence or... Pre-Colonial America For details, see the main Pre-Colonial America article. ... The Appalachian Mountains are a system of North American mountains running from Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada to Alabama in the United States, although the northernmost mainland portion ends at the Gaspe Peninsula of Quebec. ... The violin is a stringed musical instrument that has four strings tuned a fifth apart. ... This article is about the marriage ceremony. ... Ruins of abandoned mill along the Merrimack River in downtown Lowell Lowell is a city located in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. ... Saint Josephs Day is marked in some branches of Christianity in honor of Saint Joseph, spouse of Mary and foster-father of Jesus. ... Pueblo is a city located in Pueblo County in southern Colorado. ... Bali is an Indonesian island. ... A gamelan is a musical ensemble of Indonesian origin typically featuring metallophones, xylophone(s), drums, and gongs. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ... American cowboy circa 1887 A cowhand tends livestock, especially cattle. ... Farmer spreading grasshopper bait in his alfalfa field. ... Categories: Stub ... Coal is a fossil fuel extracted from the ground either by underground mining, open-pit mining or strip mining. ...

All of these images, sounds, written accounts, and a myriad more items of cultural documentation await researchers at the Center's Archive of Folk Culture, where over 4,000 collections, assembled over the years from "many workers" embody the very heart and soul of our national traditional life and the cultural life of communities from many regions of the world.

The collections in the Center's Archive of Folk Culture include folk cultural material from all fifty states, as well as United States trusts, territories, and the District of Columbia. Most of these areas have been served by the American Folklife Center's cultural surveys, equipment loan program, publications, and other projects. ...