What are they? What subjects are covered? 2018 Field School & previous Field School themes Who are they for? Who teaches them? What do participants say? Request more information

The Field Schools for Cultural Documentation

What are the field schools? What subjects are taught?

Every year, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress sponsors an intensive, introductory field school on cultural documentation in partnership with an educational institution. Held on a near-annual basis in various parts of the United States, the field school provides hands-on training in ethnographic documentary techniques and archival processes needed for effective fieldwork in a range of humanities and social science disciplines. The field school is typically three weeks in duration, held over the summer months, and covers a variety of topics that provide participants with a comprehensive introduction to cultural documentation in the field and sustaining cultural heritage assets. Topics covered include: research ethics, project planning, interviewing, metadata schema and cataloging, sound recording, documentary photography, writing fieldnotes, archival principles and delivering public presentations on research findings.

Laura Hunt (left) and Beverly Morris (right) interview Corpus Gallegos on the vega, a cattle grazing commons, San Luis, Colorado (1994) Photo: Miguel Gandert.

The first half of a typical field school course is devoted to classroom lectures on a variety of topics and hands-on workshops learning the operation of equipment and documentary techniques. The second half of the course is devoted to the application of documentation methods through team-based fieldwork. At the end of the course, research teams make public presentations on their research findings and submit their fully organized documentary materials (still image and audio files, fieldnotes, media logs, etc.) for archival deposit at the sponsoring institution.

The AFC and colleagues at the Sustainable Heritage Network have produced several online teaching modules that address these subjects and others, such as the basics of digitization planning and preservation techniques. The online videos feature AFC and Library of Congress staff, along with other cultural heritage professionals, providing explanations and hands-on demonstrations.

The 2018 Field School & Previous Field School Themes

Details about the 2018 field school will be available during the first few weeks of the new calendar year. Please consult this site at that time for information on the focus, location, duration and application information for the program.

The 2017 field school in Grand Teton National Park (GTNP) was a joint initiative of the AFC, the University of Wyoming's American Studies Program and Utah State University's Folklore Program, in cooperation with the GTNP Cultural Resources Branch. The field school focused on the traditions of dude ranching in Jackson Hole, WY, in particular the occupational folklife and on-the-job experiences of the employees of the Triangle X Ranch, the last operating dude ranch within the park.
[Read the article in Utah State Today: https://www.usu.edu/today/?id=57027]

Fieldwork research themes explored in previous field schools include:
*the experiences of refugee populations from Southeast Asia and Africa in the Cache Valley, Utah;
* social history and cultural change on the Columbia Pike in Arlington, VA; "
* the history, cultural meanings, and uses of Provo Canyon, Utah;
* maritime culture in transition in Crisfield, Maryland;
* water use and water rights in an agricultural community in southern Colorado;
* the social, economic and aesthetic dynamics of farmers markets in Colorado Springs, Colorado;
* the intersection of nature and culture along the Kokosing River, in Knox County, Ohio;
* the history, uses, and cultural meaning of Bloomington, Indiana's town square.

Team members Delia Alexander (left) and Tamara Hemmerlein (r) examine recently-processed slides from their field research during the AFC field school in Bloomington, Indiana (2000). Photo: David A. Taylor

Who are they for? Who does the teaching?

During the three week Library of Congress Field School, my classmates and I gained a solid foundation for ethnographic fieldwork. Each day I learned valuable new skills in using fieldwork equipment, in data collection, and in archival preservation. On a personal level, the Library of Congress Field School helped me to focus specifically on the story. What started out as a class which met a graduation requirement turned instead into a love of ethnography and of documenting the human experience.
Deanna Allred, 2015

Typically, twelve to fifteen participants are selected for each course. Most have little experience or previous training in cultural documentation, but do have a strong desire to obtain this training and a good potential to apply it in their future work. Past participants have included graduate and undergraduate students in folklore and related fields, school teachers, librarians, museum curators, arts and humanities council staff members, cultural activists, and oral historians.

Field school instructors usually include professional folklorists, university faculty, archivists, documentary photographers, and local community scholars; members of the American Folklife Center's staff always serve on the faculty.

In my first few months of graduate school, I have already drawn extensively on my field school experience. I frequently refer to things I learned both in the classroom and in the field as I contribute to seminar discussions, and I've used the training in documentation to pursue my own research for term papers and ongoing projects.
Lisa Powell, 2005

Marilyn Bañuelos (right) photographs Connie Romero as she interviews rancher Corpus Gallegos on the vega, during the 1994 American Folklife Center's field school. Photo: James Hardin.

What do participants say about their experiences?

As an independent consultant.. it legitimized my independent work and fueled a new pride in my goals, reinforcing the idea that there is great value in recording and interpreting, through a personal perspective, the human experience ...
Colette Lemmon, 2000

We received an apprenticeship along with our ethnographer's toolkit from the field school at Kenyon. In the field, we quickly put the tools you provided us to work. Our accelerated experience will make the project planning and implementation I do in the future seem like second nature.
Chris Grasso, 1999

Archivists, special collections librarians, and others with ethnographic collections would find it valuable to see the process of fieldwork through from start to finish...It makes for quality reference work when the librarian or archivist knows how the collection is created and organized...
Laura Hunt, 1994

Selena Lim, Gloria Paterson, and Bob Thometz (left to right), practice setting up and operating field documentation equipment during a workshop on audio-recording techniques at the 2002 AFC field school in Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio. Photo: David A. Taylor.

At the American Folklife Center's June 2000 field school in Bloomington, Indiana, team members Chris Tobar-Dupres (right) and Ronald J. Stephens (center) interview Claude Rice about Bloomington's courthouse square. Photo: David A. Taylor.

I think fieldwork is stupendous. The greatest advantage of the field school was that it allowed me to systematically experience the entire process of a fieldwork project, from planning to presenting, with handy instructions and on-going feedback from the staff throughout ...
Kyun Yun, 2000

I see the field school model you have developed for documenting local culture as a foundation for how we might train and ultimately mobilize people around the state to more actively document their communities. At a minimum, I want to investigate how to incorporate this model into educators' professional development...
Trina Nelson Thomas, 2000