The Smithsonian Institution was established in 1846 for the increase and diffusion of knowledge. Today, the institution is made up of 19 museums, 21 libraries, several research centers, publications, and a zoo. The Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (CFCH) evolved over several decades following the first Festival of American Folklife in 1967. It was renamed the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 1998, then changed to the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in 1999. CFCH includes the summer festival that takes place on the National Mall and surrounding spaces in Washington, DC, a record label, and a center for research. The official motto of CFCH is “Culture of, by, and for the people.”
The mission of the CFCH is to promote and support cultural understanding and sustainability through research, education, and community engagement. In 2019, the Center announced new, updated guidelines to assist the mission through a Shared Stewardship Collections Policy. Because of concern over potentially sensitive and private recordings made accessible to the general public, the following guidelines for ethical archiving were adopted:
- To foster sustained dialogue with source communities
- To promote greater engagement with their heritage collections
- To enhance and refine cultural documentation and associated metadata
- To ensure culturally appropriate collections care and display
- To create simple pathways for digital return and repatriation
Shared stewardship is at the core of the Center’s work with their sound recordings, and use of photographs and videos. Also called “co-curation,” it also applies to respectful attribution, documentation, interpretation, and public accessibility.
In order to reach a wider audience and promote accessibility for research, the Center publishes photographs, videos and stories from the annual Folklife Festival on their website. My role as an Intern will be to assist my supervisor, Rebecca Fenton, with transcribing audio recordings from this summer’s Folklife Festival, Indigenous Voices of the Americas, for the CFCH public website. These audio recordings and transcriptions are part of the Center’s mission and dedication to shared stewardship, as well as for compliance with the Americans with Disability Act. During the summer festival, all presentations that use a microphone are automatically recorded, and transcribed in real time to accommodate those who are hard of hearing. My task will be to assist in checking the accuracy of the transcriptions in order to publish on the website. This action supports the mission of accessibility for research and education, while also complying with its mission of shared stewardship, by enhancing and refining cultural documentation and associated metadata, and by promoting greater engagement with heritage collections.
What I am most excited about regarding my internship with the CFCH is the opportunity to meet others who are passionate about sharing cultural knowledge through public programs, research and education. I am looking forward to assisting with this project!