The Future of Collections in the Digital Age

Archivist Nicole Saylor explores what it means to curate the American Folklife Center Archive at the Library of Congress. The Archive is the nation’s oldest and largest archives of ethnographic and historical documentation, including folk songs, stories, and other creative expressions of people from diverse communities. With the proliferation of smart phones, tablets, and wireless Internet connections, the Web is increasing where folk expression can be found. To meet the mission of preserving folklife in the 21st century, how does the AFC address complicated questions of how to preserve folk culture on the Web’s vast and dynamic terrain? At the same time, how can it and other cultural heritage archives meet the challenge of providing access at digital scale to a myriad of audiovisual formats in the context of complicated cultural and copyright issues?