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Posts from the ‘Folklore Studies’ Category

Aug 28

Noyes on the Oversimplications of Cultural Property and Heritage Policy

An important working paper by my friend Dorry Noyes presenting alternatives to the conceptual oversimplifications common in cultural property and cultural heritage policy has just been circulated by the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Cultural Property at the University of Göttingen. Help make the argument even stronger with your comments and feedback here: http://www.cultural-property.org/2010/cp-101-how-traditional-culture-works

Lots to think with and work on.

Aug 24

Library Babel Fish on Open Folklore and Neighboring Discussions

Barbara Fister in her regular column on library and scholarly communications issues for Inside Higher Education (Library Babel Fish) has focused today on Open Folklore and a cluster of neighboring discussions, projects, articles, and memos relating to scholarly communications in folklore studies, anthropology, media studies, and in general. In addition to commenting on Open Folklore, she connects to (among other things) my IUB colleague (1) Ted Striphas’ article on scholarly communications in media studies [discussed here and oa here], (2) discussion of these issues at Savage Minds, (3) Kim Fortun’s memo on these matters within the American Anthropological Association, and (4) my essay on scholarly communications in folklore studies. That she could make these connections without having discussed the linkages with me (we have not communicated previously except for my comment on her post last week) is a testimony to the power of scholarly communications in a open and networked environment.

Her essay is titled Open to Change: How Open Access Can Work. It can be found here: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library_babel_fish/open_to_change_how_open_access_can_work

Thanks to Barbara for highlighting these projects and discussions so prominently.

Aug 24

Folklore Studies Assistant Professorship Open at George Mason University

The following important notice is being circulated on behalf of the folklore faculty at George Mason University:

The Department of English in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at George Mason University announce a tenure-track assistant professor position in Folklore beginning Fall 2011. Read more

Aug 13

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What can the Open Folklore project help me do now? [2]

This is a second in a series of postings describing things that can already be done with folklore studies scholarship that has been made available through the efforts of the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries. These various projects are being brought together in the Open Folklore project. While it will soon provide a portal to this diverse range of this content at http://www.openfolklore.org/, a great deal of content has already been made available. The first post described accessing folklore books via the Hathi Trust Digital Library. This post explains accessing several bundles of materials via the IUScholarWorks Repository.

IUScholarWorks Repository is a DSpace-based institutional repository for Indiana University Bloomington.  Folklore studies materials that have been incorporated within it include the following items and groups of items. While I could describe how to access these materials, it will be easiest for new users to just click the links given and explore the repository.

The journal Folklore and Folk Music Archivist (1958-1968) can be accessed here:
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/706

[As discussed here previously] a range of reports, monographs and working papers published by The Fund for Folk Culture can be accessed here:
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/3850

The back files of the journal New Directions in Folklore (1997-2003) can be found here:
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/6614

Newly added, and of special interest, are several special publications issued by the American Folklore Society, including the book 100 Years of American Folklore Studies: A Conceptual History edited by WIlliam M. Clements and published by the Society during its centennial year, 1988.  These materials can be found here:
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/9004

The motherlode of folklore scholarship in IUScholarWorks Repository are the back files of the journal Folklore Forum.  Published since 1968, forty years of journal content (1968-2008), constituting 1314 items, is available here:
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/1168

Folklore Forum is a publication of Trickster Press, the student-run publishing house in Indiana’s Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology.  Trickster continues to publish Folklore Forum as a gold open access journal (see here). In addition to making its back files available in IUScholarWorks Repository, the Trickster Press team, working with the IUB Libraries has also made available content from the Folklore Forum Bibliographic and Special Series (87 items), which can be found here:
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/2567

Books from the Folklore Forum Monograph Series, can be found here:
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/2569

In addition to these Folklore Forum-related materials, Trickster Press has also opened four of its out of print book titles.  These are:

Log Buildings in Southern Indiana by Warren Roberts (1996) available here:
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/3775

Folklore on Two Continents: Essays in Honor of Linda Degh edited by Carl Lindahl and Nikolai Burlakoff (1980) available here:
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/3774

Fields of Folklore: Essays in Honor of Kenneth S. Goldstein edited by Roger D. Abrahams (1995) available here:
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/3773

and The Old Traditional Way of Life: Essays in Honor of Warren E. Roberts edited by Robert E. Walls, George H. Schoemaker, Jennifer Livesay, and Laura Dassow Walls (1989) available here:
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/3137

In classic institutional repository mode, various materials produced in IUB’s Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology are also available in IUScholarWorks Repository. These materials, which include conference proceedings, post prints, MA theses, sound recordings, and syllabi can be found here:
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/28

This heterogeneous corpus of folklore scholarship is continuing to grow and it is anticipated that the Open Folklore portal will make consulting it easier in the years ahead.  In the meantime, there is plenty for the early adopters to read, study and enjoy.

Thanks to all who have worked to make these resources openly available.  Thanks as well to the many people who have expressed support for the Open Folklore project.

Aug 12

On “Five Suggestions for the Open Folklore Project”

The author of the blog Archivology has offered “5 Suggestions for the Open Folklore Project.” This is a detailed and thoughtful contribution, one very worthy of the attention of those interested in scholarly communications issues in general and in folklore specifically. Together with Alex Golub’s discussion of the project on Savage Minds, these are valuable inputs for the early phase of the effort. Those involved in the early phase of the project are very appreciative of these commentators and also of those who have spread news of the project on twitter and in the media (see Nathan Miller’s story in the Indiana Daily Student here).

Aug 4

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Savage Minds on Scholarly Communication

Significant posts appeared today on Savage Minds related to scholarly communications in my two fields of study. Chris Kelty writes about the latest developments within the American Anthropological Association, focusing on (and releasing) an important memo by former Cultural Anthropology co-editor Kim Fortun. Alex Golub writes about the Open Folklore project of the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries and the American Folklore Society (with which I am involved and about which I have been writing here).

Read all about it.

Aug 1

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What can the Open Folklore project help me do now? [1]

While one way to think about Open Folklore is as a website or as a scholarly portal (that will live at http://www.openfolklore.org/ ) another way to think about it is to see it as a branding effort or as a unified (unifying) label for a mixed collection of projects, efforts and services being pursued by the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries and the American Folklore Society aimed at making more of the scholarly literature and a greater range of scholarly resources in folklore studies openly available for those who need them. This post is the first in what I hope will be a series in which I show as quickly as I can what some of these resources are and how to access them independently. I am drawing here upon what we might call the “quiet phase” projects that provide the current core of content around which the Open Folklore portal or (viewed somewhat differently) the Open Folklore banner can be wrapped.

In this, context, “What can the Open Folklore project help me do now?” Here is a first and (I hope) simple answer.

Answer 1:  Open Folklore can enable you to consult the full text of out-of-copyright books from the Indiana University Libraries’ famed Folklore Collection in the Hathi Trust Digital Library.

The IU Folklore Collection was digitized by the Google Books project in partnership with the libraries of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC). It constitutes the first “Collection of Distinction” to be digitized in this partnership.

Much of the content (books and journals) from the Folklore Collection has already appeared in Hathi Trust. For works that are no longer under copyright, the full text of the original work is both full text searchable and full text readable. So, if you want to consult and read or search a particular book in the collection, you can now do so online. If you wish to try it out, here are the stable URLs for some sample works in the collection.

George Bird Grinnel’s The Punishment of Stingy and Other Indian Stories (1901)
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.39000005892356

George H. McKnight’s St. Nicholas: His Legend and His Role in the Christmas Celebration and Other Popular Customs (1917)
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.39000005678284

Arthur Mitchell’s On the Popular Weather Prognostics of Scotland (1863)
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.32000001681875

Max Müller’s Lectures on the Science of Religion: With a paper on Buddhist Nihilism and a Translation of the Dhammapada or “Path of Virtue” (1872)
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.30000050315583

Paul Radin’s El Folklore de Oaxaca (1917)
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.30000118485246

The stable URL for these works also enables you to reliably cite these work when writing or creating new scholarly projects building on this older work. They can be used in citations in new written (and perhaps printed) works such as books and articles, but also in websites, blog posts, and other scholarly new media.

There are (as of today) 2425 other works from the Folklore Collection itself available in full text via Hathi Trust. Hathi Trust as a whole provides full text access to over a million volumes that are in the public domain (representing about 19% of the collection as a whole.) [More on using the in-copyright volumes later.]

Find a volume of relevance to you and try out the folklore studies offerings of Hathi Trust, made possible by our friends at the Indiana University Bloomington libraries, the librarians of the CIC, Google Books, and the other Hathi Trust partners.

Jul 28

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Open Folklore

Open Folklore–The announcement. I will write of it more later but for now I just want to highlight the announcement last night by the American Folklore Society (AFS) and the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries of the formal start of the Open Folklore project. Read all about it here http://www.openfolklore.org/ Quite a lot of work has already been accomplished during the quiet phase. Thanks to everyone who has work to make this happen, especially the AFS and IUB Library leadership for supporting it. Thanks too to the rights holders who are freely sharing the content under their stewardship.

The earlier post on Opening Three More Established Folklore Studies Journals can be understood more clearly in light of this broader project.

Jul 25

Worldwide List of OA Journals in Anthropology

Thanks to antropologi.info for compiling a worldwide list of (gold) open access journals in anthropology and neighboring fields. (Many folklore and ethnology titles are included.) In addition to listing known journals with links, a search utility has been set up on the site. Find the OA anthropology journal list here: http://www.antropologi.info/links/Main/Journals . This is a great resource for a number of reasons, including the presence here of titles such that have not been included in the Directory of Open Access Journals. The listing should be of special value to higher education librarians and the students and faculty that they support.

Antropologi.info had already established itself as the best blogroll in anthropology (see here), so this was a logical and wonderful next step.

Jul 19

Folklore Studies and the Big Digital Humanities

(As John Laudun has already noted) warm congratulations are due to our UCLA folklore colleague Timothy R. Tangherlini who (with Peter Leonard of the University of Washington) has secured a Google Digital Humanities Research Award for their project Northern Insights: Tools and Techniques for Automated Literary Analysis, Based on the Scandinavian Corpus in Google Books. Tim is a leader in digital humanities research whose focus is on big projects that explore ways of dealing with large amounts of folklore data. This is important work and I am glad that Google is recognizing the work that Tim and his colleagues have been pursuing. Congratulations!

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