About
The American Folklore Society and the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress collaborated on a conference, "Folk Heritage Collections in Crisis," held on December 1-2, 2000, and gathered experts to formulate recommendations for the preservation and access of America's folk heritage sound collections. To facilitate informed discussion at the conference, the organizers commissioned papers on three major factors affecting the long-term accessibility of folklore collections: access, preservation, and rights management. The papers, reproduced in this document with the discussions they provoked, were sent to participants before the conference and formed the basis for discussion at three sessions. The papers are: "Stating the Obvious: Lessons Learned Attempting Access to Archival Audio Collections" (Virginia Danielson); "Preservation of Audio" (Elizabeth Cohen); and "Intellectual Property and Audiovisual Archives and Collections" (Anthony Seeger). On the second day of the conference, participants crafted recommended actions that are also reported in this document. As background information for the conference, a survey was conducted of the holdings of the members of several folklore societies and major repositories. A summary of the results is provided in an appendix. Conference participants are also listed.