HEAD OF COLLECTION

I head the collection, "Food Processing and Legacy Trades," for the Library of Congress' Occupational Folklife Project. The project is housed in the Library's American Folklife Center and is a multi-year documentation project that seeks to capture a portrait of America's workforce during a time of transition. I conduct interviews with workers in legacy trades (e.g. sugar milling and tannage) across the United States, discussing their workplace experiences, training, and occupational communities.

The American Folklife Center Archive, established in the Library of Congress Music Division in 1928, is now one of the largest archives of ethnographic materials from around the world, encompassing millions of items of ethnographic and historical documentation recorded from the nineteenth century to the present. These collections, which include extensive audiovisual documentation of traditional arts, cultural expressions, and oral histories, offer researchers access to the songs, stories, and other creative expressions of people from diverse communities.