Making "bean-hole-beans" at the Common Ground County Fair, Unity, Maine, 1999. Part of the documentation in Maine's Local Legacies Projects.

Maine

The American Folklife Center was created by Congress in 1976 through Public Law 94-201 and charged to "preserve and present American folklife." Part of the Library of Congress, the Center incorporates the Library's Archive of Folk Culture, founded in 1928. The Center carries out its mandate through its collections, programs, and services, which have touched all fifty states.

Collections

The collections of the American Folklife Center contain rich and varied materials from Maine that document the diversity of the state's folk traditions. Among its rarest materials are the first wax-cylinder field recordings, made in 1890 of Passamaquoddy Indian music and tales in Calais. There are also maritime and lumbering traditions; oral histories from Aroostook county; and African American Baptist services. The Center conducted the Maine Acadian Cultural Survey in 1991, which documented the ongoing traditions of the Acadian people of the northernmost regions of the state. The documentary material created during the project, including thousands of photographs and hundreds of hours of interviews, has been incorporated into the collections of the Folklife Center.

Maine participated in the Library's Bicentennial Local Legacies project, which includes documentation of local traditions and celebrations for the American Folklife Center's Archive of Folk Culture.

• View Maine's Local Legacies projects

Field Research Projects

• 1991 Maine Acadian Cultural Survey

Publications

• Report on The Maine Acadian Cultural Survey
• "The Teamster in Jack MacDonald's Crew: A Song in Context and Its Singing," Folklife Annual 1985