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Following Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge's 1924 donation of $60,000 to the Library of Congress for the construction of an auditorium for musical performances, Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam and Music Division chief Carl Engel created an Archive of American Folksong in 1928.

Coolidge made the donation because she felt "libraries should not be merely the custodians of manuscripts condemned to preservation as mute artifacts of an earlier time," but that "this music must be brought to life in performance."

Coolidge's gift to the LOC inspired Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam and Music Division cheif Carl Engel to form the Archive of American Folksong. This was the very first library collection to house songs from oral culture, rather than from books or manuscripts. The creation of the folk song archive was an important step in the acknowledgement of the importance of folk culture in American identity.

Today, the original collections of the Archive of American Folk Song are part of the Archive of Folk Culture at the American Folklife Center. This archive currently includes over three million photographs, manuscripts, audio recordings, and moving images.

Sources:

Aikin, "High Culture, Low Culture: The Singular Duality of the Library of Congress," ''American Studies'', 42:3 (Fall 2001)

http://www.loc.gov/folklife/archive.html

http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9712/esc.html

Compiled by: Jennifer Gile

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