Filling “An Immense Brain with Very Little in the Brain” for “Perpetual Memory”: Folklore Archiving New and Old

This personal historical account reveals the clash between the author’s expectations of folklore archiving based on past practices in the field and emerging archiving paradigms of folklorists who have received professional archiving training and have begun to incorporate digital-age models. This productive encounter resulted in questioning applications of common models; forging partnerships and relationships across professional paradigms, specialists, institutions, and generational divides; and inevitably localizing practice. The experience suggests the formation of “a regional folklore archival ecotype” based on late twentieth-century public folklore practice, despite digital-age standardization.