Library of Congress - American Folklife Center and Music Division

The Library of Congress houses the American Folklife Center (established by Congress in 1976) and a Music Division that together preserve field recordings, oral histories, manuscripts, and recorded sound collections documenting American musical traditions. The collections include significant field-recording archives and materials by collectors such as Alan Lomax, and they are a primary research resource for the study of folk, blues, gospel, and other vernacular musics. The Library's sound recordings and archives have been used in scholarly work and public exhibitions about U.S. music history.