Center for Folklore Studies Archival Holdings

#GradCapTraditions: Decorating graduation caps, also known as mortarboards, has become an increasingly common tradition among graduating students. Dr. Sheila Bock from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas is doing a study on the diverse forms and meanings of this tradition among people graduating from colleges or universities. The purpose of this study, titled “Decorated Mortarboards: Forms and Meanings,” is to find out how and why people choose to decorate their mortarboards.

Appalachian Studies Network@OSU: Audio and video interviews with community members in southeast Ohio reflecting on educational, economic, social, political, and environmental factors affecting high school students in the area and their desires to attend college. This project also includes audio and video of focus groups held with Appalachian students who currently attend Ohio State University. Material artifacts include pamphlets collected during site visits. Digital photographs from the site visits are also included. (Formerly the Appalachian Project, Ohio)

Copapayo-Columbus Sister City Project: Documents collected include newspaper clippings, delegation information, personal correspondence, video footage, a book and other miscellaneous documents. Other items include material objects like t-shirts, posters, crafts from Copapayo and the FMLN. Moreover, archived are a number of interviews conducted from February-April 2014 with key leaders and community members involved with the project.

Genre Cards: Boxes of filing cards and student papers categorized by genre. Materials were collected by OSU students. Major genres include belief, custom, legend (character, etiological, contemporary).

Key Ingredients: Ohio by Food: Images, audio, and transcription from a foodways exhibit coordinated by the Ohio Humanities Council and supported by We The People, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Materials include photographs, interviews, and transcriptions.

Lake Erie Fishermen: Laborlore in Ohio: The Lake Erie Fishermen Collection was compiled by Timothy Lloyd and Patrick Mullen from 1983 to 1984 in northern Ohio. The collection includes interviews with 20 individuals, thirty 90-minute TDK cassette tapes, 35 sheets of negatives, 35 contact sheets, 725 slides, 393 black-and-white photographs, 131 pages of logs of 16 interviews, 746 pages of transcription from 25 interviews, and one hardcover book. A secondary collection includes one binder of 52 CDs of audio material and three DVDs of audio material digitized from the cassette tapes. Lake Erie Fishermen: Work, Tradition, and Identity, a co-authored monograph by Timothy Lloyd and Patrick Mullen, is available to read on the ACLS Humanities E-book website, where you can also access multimedia collection materials from the original fieldwork from our Folklore Archives.

New Harmonies: Ohio Vernacular Music Today: Digitized music (original field recordings of folk music festivals in Ohio and selected records of Ohio musicians), research notes, and images (forthcoming) from the New Harmonies tour in Ohio. The project was coordinated by the Ohio Humanities Council and supported by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibit Service’s Museum on Main Street initiative.

Ohio Arts Council Projects: Consists of several fieldwork projects funded by the Ohio Arts Council in the 1970s and 1980s. Materials include interviews, slides, and recordings documenting Ohio folklore, such as fiddle contests, foodways, and religious practices.

Ohio Field Schools: The Ohio Field Schools Collection contains audio interviews, photographs, fieldnotes, and ephemera collected by CFS faculty and staff, and graduate and undergraduate students enrolled in the Ohio Field Schools course. The project, sponsored by a generous gift from the Columbus Foundation in 2016, asks the question: How do Ohioans create a sense of place in a changing environment?

Ohio Valley Folk Publications: Publications of the Ohio Valley Folklore Research Project carried out by the Ross County Historical Society in Chillicothe, Ohio, in the 1950s and early 1960s. The items originally were printed by mimeograph and assembled using wallpaper (taken from sample books) as covers and stapling the pages on the spine. This on-line collection is of the covers or first-pages only of items held in the collection.

Oral Narratives of Latinos/as in Ohio: The Oral Narratives of Latinos/as in Ohio is a statewide initiative begun in 2014 to collect, catalog, and preserve oral narratives of Latinos/as in Ohio in collaboration with the Ohio Hispanic Heritage Project and the Center for Folklore Studies. Materials include video interviews and photographs.

Student Ethnographic Projects: Over 10,000 OSU folklore student research projects stretching back to the early 1960s, focusing on regional oral traditions (with a particular strength in contemporary and historical legends, anecdotes, jokes, and oral history), beliefs, customs, festivals, material culture, and traditional ways of living.

Say Amen: Portraits of Southern Ohio Folklife: Materials collected by the Southern Ohio Folklife Radio Program. Materials include reel-to-reel audio of the series sponsored by the Ohio Arts Council.

Slang Journals: The Slang Journal Collection is a compilation of words, sayings, and abbreviations collected by English 2271 students since autumn 2011, as well as one Mosaic high school student's 50-term contribution in SP17. There are currently 1,900 entries. The master list is an Excel file that includes the following information, each in separate columns: word, preceding utterance, utterance containing word, following utterance, spoken/written, speaker age, speaker gender, speaker race/ethnicity, addressee age, addressee gender, addressee race/ethnicity, domain, taboo, situational context, meaning, semester and year of collection. The alphabetical catalogue enables researchers to seek out specific terms, compare applications of a word or saying, or simply familiarize oneself with popular terminology used on and around the Ohio State University campus, as documented by students.

University District Project: Oral histories collected from OSU University District residents by students in English 367.05: The American Folk Experience (winter and autumn 2008). Materials include interviews, photographs, and transcripts.

Erika Bourguignon: Personal correspondences, publications, and articles produced and collected by Dr. Bourguignon, OSU professor emeritus of Anthropology.

Francis Lee Utley Folklore Collection: Documents and music records collected by Fancis Lee Utley (1907-1974), founder of the Center for Folklore Studies Archives. The Utley Record Collection contains over 7,000 music records (78s, 33½s) produced throughout the 20^th century by various labels and spanning numerous genres and countries of origin.

John Stewart: Bibliographic cards from Dr. Stewart’s Afro-Caribbean research.

Pat Mullen Research & Teaching: Research and teaching files, including numerous reel-to-reel fieldwork tapes and lectures. Collection includes reel-to-reel recordings of fieldwork in Texas in 1967 and of the Ohio Folklore Festival in the early 1970s.

Rosemary Joyce: Materials include slides, audiotapes, fieldwork guides, event publications, bibliographies, songbooks, journals, magazines, record albums, books, and articles from Joyce’s personal collection. Collection focuses on Ohio traditional crafts, such as basket-making and quilting, and includes slides of Ohio fairs.

Margaret Mills: Folklore reference books, literature, photocopied articles, journals, and correspondence.

Dan Barnes: Folklore reference books.

Center for Folklore Studies: Documents, files, photographs, audio and video files, and posters relating to the foundation and activities of the Center for Folklore Studies at Ohio State University.

Dissertations and Theses: Dissertations and theses completed by Ohio State University folklore students in various departments. Printed and electronic copies of manuscripts.

Folklore Research Materials: Books, journals, DVDs and CDs of interest to folklorists.

Teaching Aids: Collection contains reels of lectures from folklore courses taught through the English department at OSU.

• Faculty Publications [pdf] - list of publications by core and associated faculty
• Journal of American Folklore, published by Journal of American Folklore
• Journal of the Folklore Institute, Bloomington, Ind & Indiana University Press
• Lake Erie Fishermen, compiled by Timothy Lloyd and Patrick Mullen, 1983 to 1984 in northern Ohio
• Ohio Arts Council Projects, at the OSU CFS Archives
• Rosemary Joyce Donations, donated materials from Rosemary Joyce 2003
• Rosemary Joyce Research Materials, collected 1977‐1985
• Say Amen: Portraits of Southern Ohio Folklife Radio Program, Series 1983
• Western Folklore, both at Berkeley, University of California and at OSU CFS