Ukrainian Folklore Center hosts American specialist on folk culture (04/03/05)

Ukrainian Folklore Center hosts American specialist on folk culture

by Natalie Kononenko

EDMONTON - On March 16 and 17, the Kule Chair in Ukrainian Ethnography and the Ukrainian Folklore Center of the University of Alberta sponsored a visit by Michael Taft, head of the Archive of Folk Culture at the American Folklife Center of the United States Library of Congress.

Dr. Taft is no stranger to Canada and Edmonton. He received his Ph.D. in folklore from Memorial University of Newfoundland and his M.A. in library science from the University of Alberta.

While at the University of Alberta, Dr. Taft examined the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives, assessing preservation and indexing procedures. He then offered advice on procedure improvement. He met with staff concerned with the digitization of archival materials, a process which should both improve preservation and greatly expand public access.

On Thursday, March 17, Dr. Taft gave a public lecture titled "The Ethnographic Archive in the 21st Century." He said that, while collecting folklore had been the primary concern of scholars in the past, preservation of materials will be the task of the future. Rapidly changing technologies demand the creation of digital copies of archival materials. We must also digitize in a format that will allow conversion to new technologies as these are introduced, he added.

Dr. Taft gave some examples from the Veterans' Oral History Project at the Archive of Folk Culture and played excerpts of sound recordings that are already available over the Internet.

Dr. Taft's earlier Canadian experiences include service as the university archivist and head of special collections at the University of Northern British Columbia, as well as fieldwork collecting folksongs.

Among his most notable current projects is Save Our Sounds, a United States-wide effort to digitize and preserve folksong recordings.

Dr. Taft and an international team of folklorists are also working on a thesaurus to facilitate digital information exchange. Such a thesaurus would allow people all over the world to search and access digital archives, such as the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archive housed at the University of Alberta.

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