American Culture Folklore and Oral History Archives, 2005-2009

Start Over Collection American Culture Folklore and Oral History Archives, 2005-2009

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American Culture Folklore and Oral History Archives, 2005-2009

13.5 linear feet (in 31 boxes) — 1 videotape (8mm videocassettes) — 1 videotape (mini-DVs) — 4 videotapes (VHS (TM)) — 132 audiocassettes (microcassettes) — 97 audiocassettes — 9 USB thumb drives (3 4GB, 3 2GB, 2 512MB, and 2 128MB) — 10 floppy disks (3.5") — 1 optical discs (mini DVDs) — 10 optical discs (DVD-Rs) — 1 optical discs (Hi-MD (MiniDisc)) — 2 optical discs (MiniDiscs) — 1 optical discs (mini CDs) — 27 optical discs (CD-RWs) — 220 optical discs (CD-Rs)

Archives of folklore collected by students in the course "Survey of American Folklore" offered by the University of Michigan Program in American Culture and first taught by Bruce Conforth in 2005. Collected folklore reports compiled by students in American Folklore course based on oral interviews with informants. (Interviews are included on a variety of physical formats--cassettes, microcassettes, CDs, VHS tapes). Reports include essays, transcripts on topics ranging from popular folklore to campus legends and traditions.

The American Culture Folklore and Oral History Archives consists of folklore collection reports prepared by undergraduate students in the American Folklore course offered by the University of Michigan Program in American Culture. Prior to the transfer to the Bentley Historical Library, the folklore reports were organized according to general topics by students in the course and placed in archival folders and boxes under the direction of the professor. That order has been retained. Very often the media and objects included in the report have remained. The collection is meant to directly serve students who may take the Survey of American Folklore class in the future, and indirectly to those who, years from now, may re-discover and research aspects of American folklore that were pertinent during present day.

There is considerable overlap in subject matter between the categories of collecting topics. In the collection, folders for the first set of reports in a series are ordered according to their pre-assigned number (which can be found in the Administrative Files series) and not according to the last name of the student or title. For the second set, however, where no such number exists, the reports are ordered by surname of the student. In this finding aid, only the student's name and title of the report is listed. Further in the series names will appear to be in alphabetical order when the pre-assigned numbers were not continued.

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Administrative Files

The Administrative Files series consists of one box, with the folders labeled according to the genres/categories of papers that were written. These files contain "Accession Forms" for the American Culture Folklore Archives, and were filled out by hand for each report in the collection. They contain an assigned accession number (one number per report), the genre and sub-genre categories the report files under, as well as any keywords, presumably student-assigned, that relate to the report. The form also has a checklist for each type of material that was submitted along with the report (a list of informants, discs, audio cassettes, etc.), which may or may not have remained with the collection. The second page of the accession form asks for certain metadata from the student, such as the page length for certain documents, the condition of the accession, location, and number of informants. The forms in this series correspond with the first accession of reports that came as part of this collection. Not all reports in the collection may have an accession form or be recorded in the administrative files.

These files also contain the information on the release status for the collection reports. In some cases the collector and author of the reports has assigned some release limitations and in other cases the informants/interviewees have assigned release limitations (typically that their names not be used).