Flower garden quilt by Mealii Kalama of Hawaii. Cotton applique, 89" x 81", ca. 1988. Kalama has received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Photograph by Dudley Smith, courtesy of the Denver Museum of Natural History. From the Masters of Traditional Arts DVD-ROM, produced by Alan Govenar and published by ABC-CLIO.
 

About the Project

Availability of the Ethnographic Thesaurus
Support for the Ethnographic Thesaurus
History of the Ethnographic Thesaurus
Ethnographic Thesaurus Staff [2004-2007]
Ethnographic Thesaurus Advisory Board


Availability of the Ethnographic Thesaurus

The Ethnographic Thesaurus is a web-based resource that is available to the public, free of charge, on the American Folklore Society's website. Anyone can browse its facets and copy them at no charge. Acknowledgement of the use of the Ethnographic Thesaurus is the only consideration requested.

When significant portions of the Ethnographic Thesaurus are reproduced in full or altered for use in publications, websites, or otherwise distributed, the American Folklore Society requests the courtesy of a formal citation, which reads as follows:

American Folklore Society. Ethnographic Thesaurus Online. http://et.afsnet.org/.

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Support for the Ethnographic Thesaurus

Support for the development of the Ethnographic Thesuarus was provided by the following:

  • A major grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
  • The American Folklife Center, Library of Congress
  • The Fenwick Library, the Department of English, and Folklore Program of George Mason University
  • The Division of Preservation and Access, National Endowment for the Humanities
  • The Folklore Program and English Department at the University of Oregon
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History of the Ethnographic Thesaurus

In 1988, the Subject Access Working Group (SAWG) of the American Folklore Society was established to explore the feasibility of creating a controlled vocabulary for the discipline of folklore. Among the first accomplishments of this group was a survey of the folklore community that determined that there was indeed a demand for an ethnographic thesaurus.

In 2000, the Ethnographic Thesaurus Working Group was formed to further the work of SAWG. Funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2001 allowed SAWG to once again survey the ethnographic community, place a prototype thesaurus of folklore terms online and plan further actions.

In 2003, the American Folklore Society received a major grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to hire a lexicographer, two subject specialists in folklore and ethnomusicology, and a database manager to begin the construction of the Ethnographic Thesaurus and to convene an advisory board to offer guidance on the project. The Ethnographic Thesaurus Advisory Board consists of 13 members who have archival, museum, and library experience and represent the fields of folklore, cultural anthropology, ethnomusicology, and library science.

During the fall of 2007, the first full draft of the thesaurus was posted on the American Folklore Society website, using MultiTes Pro, a thesaurus construction and management program. The MultiTes software program provides an HTML export of the Ethnographic Thesaurus to upload onto the web that creates a dynamically-searchable thesaurus, as well as an XML export to allow the data to be shared among different platforms and applications.

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Ethnographic Thesaurus Staff [June 1, 2004 - June 1, 2007]

David Batty, Lexicographer
David Batty is a recognized authority on classification and index language construction. He has designed and developed thesauri for many clients, including the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Institutes of Health, the University of Maryland Hospital Emergency Medical Services, and the Washington Post. He is currently at work on a book on thesaurus construction.

Jill Ann Johnson, Subject Specialist
Jill Ann Johnson is an ethnomusicologist in the dissertation phase of her Ph.D. at the University of Washington, researching southeastern European diasporic groups in Washington State. She has worked as an ethnomusicologist on a number of projects including Experience Music Project and Smithsonian Global Sound. She is a performer and teacher of several styles of Balkan folk song and is currently living in Sweden.

Camilla H. Mortensen, Subject Specialist
Camilla H. Mortensen earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of Oregon working in the areas of narrative theory and ethnographic ethics with area specialties in the contemporary US, Scandinavia and the Caribbean. Her MA is in Folklore and Mythology from UCLA where she worked on folk art and folk narrative. She is currently working on a book project examining the interplay of ethnographic documentation and contemporary fiction.

Kristin Cooper Rainey, Database Manager/Administrator
Kristin Cooper Rainey received her M.S. degree in Library and Information Science from Simmons College in Boston, and her M.S. in Sociolinguistics from Georgetown University. Previously the Director of the Madbury Public Library in Madbury, N.H., Kristin and her husband now own Little Willow, a natural parenting store located in Red Bank, N.J.

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Ethnographic Thesaurus Advisory Board Co-Chairs

Catherine Hiebert Kerst, Folklife Specialist/Archivist, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, DC

Michael Taft, Head of the Archive, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, DC

Ethnographic Thesaurus Advisory Board

Suzanne Flandreau, Head Librarian and Archivist, Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College, Chicago, IL

Maggie Kruesi, Librarian (Cataloger), American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, DC

Robert Leopold, Director, National Anthropological Archives and Human Studies Film Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC

Kara Lewis, Collections Information Program Manager, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC

Timothy Lloyd, Executive Director, American Folklore Society, Columbus, OH

Marsha Maguire, Librarian (Cataloger), Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA

Ellen McHale, Executive Director of the New York Folklore Society, Schenectady, NY

Laurel Sercombe, Archivist, University of Washington Ethnomusicology Archives, Seattle, WA

Moira Smith, Subject Librarian for Anthropology, Folklore, Sociology, Gender Studies, & Social Work, Indiana University Library, Bloomington, IN

Stephanie Smith, Assistant Archivist, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC

Margaret Yocom, Folklorist, Associate Professor of English and Director of Northern Virginia Folklife Archive, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA

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