Item Detail
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Library of Congress
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Ancestral voices
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Among the very first activities of the American Folklife Center (AFC) -- created in 1976 -- was the Federal Cylinder Project (FCP), a large-scale initiative to preserve and provide access to historic and fragile field recordings captured on wax cylinders, many dating back to the late nineteenth century. The goal of the FCP (1977-1987) was to gather together thousands of such historical recordings held at the Library, in national and international repositories, at universities, and in private collections; produce catalog records; preserve the audio on reel-to-reel tape; and make the recordings available to communities of origin. In particular, the initiative focused on some 9,000 cylinder recordings of Native American cultural expressions, with the aim of sharing copies with those communities to further their work in linguistic maintenance and reclamation and ownership of cultural heritage. Between 1983 and 1988, thanks in part to a grant of $118,000 from the Ford Foundation, FCP project staff -- including scholars from the Library, the Smithsonian Institution, and public universities -- visited approximately 100 tribal communities and returned cassette copies of cylinder recordings (cassette being the most accessible format at the time). Ancestral Voices is the successor to that pioneering project and utilizes emerging digital technologies and innovative approaches to address issues in preservation, co-curation, cultural representation, and intellectual access that are of critical concern for both cultural communities and archival repositories. (from the website)
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Website
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Washington, D.C.
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Library of Congress
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English
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Internet
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13616