American Folklife Center: Update [fwd]
Steve Goldfield
[I'm forwarding this message from Judy McCulloh, which has
appeared in some other lists and newsgroups today.--sag]
Dear friends,
Here's where we are with the American Folklife Center. Officially, this
is the report I was asked to prepare for distribution at the American
Folklore Society's annual meeting in mid-October. Given the number of
inquiries about the Center's fate, I'm taking the liberty of sharing this
with you all now. Please feel free to pass it along to anyone you believe
might be interested.
Once again, heartfelt thanks for your support.
Judy
**********
American Folklife Center
Thanks to the help of friends in the American Folklore Society
as well as the larger folklore community, the American Folklife
Center remains alive and well.
In 1976 President Gerald Ford signed into law the American
Folklife Preservation Act (Public Law 94-201), which created the
Center and placed it at the Library of Congress. Many folk-
lorists, led by Archie Green, worked for a decade to educate Con-
gress about folklore and folklife and the strategic and symbolic
importance of having a national center dedicated to this part of
our culture. With the additional impetus of Bicentennial spirit,
P.L. 94-201 passed with wide bipartisan support in both the House
and the Senate.
The Center's work complements that of other Library units,
and staff work closely with colleagues throughout the Library.
Still, the fact that the Center has its own enabling legislation
and an independent Board of Trustees, appointed by Congress and
the President, has given it a special status within the Library.
While the Center's funding is appropriated as part of the larger
Library budget, Congress reauthorizes the Center separately (that
is, it authorizes appropriations for the Center to continue to
carry
out its work). Up to now, reauthorization has been for one, two, or
three years at a time.
In 1995 the Library of Congress sought legislation reauthoriz-
ing the Center. Senator Mark Hatfield introduced S. 1051,
providing for a four-year reauthorization. The Committee on House
Oversight, where a corresponding bill would have arisen, did not
act on this request, largely because of the influence of newly
elected and returning conservatives with their well-known agendas.
The Library began to question the feasibility of getting
reauthorization legislation through the current Congress. At their
meeting this spring, May 9-10, the Board of Trustees learned that
the Library had some time earlier proposed transforming the Center
into a regular division of the Library and downsizing its staff and
operations. On May 16, Representative William Thomas, chair of
the Committee on House Oversight, introduced H.R. 3491, which
would repeal the American Folklife Preservation Act and abolish
the American Folklife Center and its Board of Trustees. The com-
mittee reported this bill to the full House on May 23, the same
day that Senator Robert Dole made his two appointments to the
Center's Board of Trustees.
On June 20 Jane Beck (for AFS), Joe Wilson (for the National
Council for Traditional Arts), and I (for the Center's Board of
Trustees) issued a statement opposing the repeal of P.L. 94-201,
the American Folklife Preservation Act. Many friends and col-
leagues around the country (and some from abroad) joined us in
making our views known to members of Congress. The Internet
proved an especially effective means for getting the good word
out and back quickly, as well as for debating the larger issues
at stake.
On July 10, the House passed H.R. 3754, the bill appropriating
the Library's budget for FY 1997. This included $745,800 for the
Center and represented the loss of four positions.
Also on July 10, at the Senate subcommittee hearing on Legis-
lative Branch appropriations (which includes the Library's
budget, and thus the Center's), Senator Hatfield queried the Li-
brarian closely over his intentions regarding the Center. When
the full Senate Committee on Appropriations reported out its ver-
sion of the Legislative Branch bill (H.R. 3754), Senator Hatfield
not only restored the cuts in funding and staff, but also recom-
mended that the Center be permanently authorized. Representative
Thomas allowed that the appropriations process was not the right
place to handle reauthorization matters. Senator Hatfield
agreed. When the Senate bill came to the floor for discussion on
July 29, he substituted language reauthorizing the Center for two
more years, but at its current funding level, $928,800, that is,
with no loss of positions. In conference, the House accepted the
Senate version of the bill. President Clinton still has to sign
off on H.R. 3754. It's expected that everything will move for-
ward in its current form. Technically, of course, the Center's
immediate future is not secure until that presidential signature
is in place.
Senator Hatfield's eloquent floor comments about the American
Folklife Center deserve our respectful attention. They form an
appendix to this report.
As if this flurry of crisis activity were not complicated
enough, when the House Committee on Appropriations reported its
version of H.R. 3754 to the full House on July 8, Representative
David Obey, who had not been kept informed about the Library's
plans for the Center, included language instructing the Librarian
of Congress "to create a plan which includes cost savings to
transfer the Library's American Folklife Center (including its
board, budget, staff, and collections) to the Center for Folklife
Programs and Cultural Studies at the Smithsonian Institu-
tion....beginning on October 1, 1996." In response to this
directive, on July 25 the Board of Trustees held a special meet-
ing at the Library. Jane Beck represented AFS and Stephen Wade
represented NCTA. The Librarian, Dr. James Billington, and
several of his senior managers joined the meeting. The Librar-
ian affirmed his belief that the Center should be permanently au-
thorized, in the form established by P.L. 94-201. The transfer
plan is still being created, though it's unclear now what outcome
this would have, given the strong likelihood of the two-year
reauthorization.
In the coming year the Center's Board of Trustees will work
vigorously toward permanent authorization. The education of Con-
gress begins afresh with each election. The task ahead will be
challenging. Yet the heartfelt support that so many folklorists
and concerned citizens readily provided in this current effort
encourages us to ask again for help when the time comes, and the
many enthusiastic endorsements of the Center's role in the folk-
lore enterprise strengthen our conviction that the task is well
worth the effort.
Respectfully submitted,
Judith McCulloh
Chair, Board of Trustees
American Folklife Center
Floor remarks by Senator Mark Hatfield, July 29, 1996:
Mr. Hatfield: Mr. President, this amendment would provide for
the reauthorization of the American Folklife Center at the Li-
brary of Congress for fiscal years 1997 and 1998. It is a sub-
stitute for the permanent reauthorization reported by the com-
mittee. I am offering this amendment after conversations with
Representative Thomas, the chairman of the Committee on Oversight
in the other body. I understand Chairman Thomas' concerns about
the proper role of the authorization committees and am willing to
respond to his concerns at this time. I hope, however, that the
next Congress will enact a permanent authorization for the cen-
ter.
The American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress was
created 20 years ago by passage of the American Folklife Preser-
vation Act of 1976. I was pleased to be a cosponsor of the
legislation, which enjoyed broad bicameral and bipartisan sup-
port. The legislation was endorsed by Senators Strom Thurmond
and Hubert Humphrey, and by Representative David Obey and then-
Representative Trent Lott. The support was so broad because the
legislation had such obvious merit.
The Library was chosen as the site of the Center for several
reasons, but principal among them was the strength of the Li-
brary's folklife collections. It is not too great a stretch to
say that those collections began at the beginning, when Thomas
Jefferson's library was purchased for the Library of Congress.
Jefferson's library included significant material about Native
Americans, and, of course, the information collected during the
expedition of Merriwether Lewis and William Clark.
Now as then, one has to collect folklife. No one stands with
pad and pencil, recording the lives of workaday Americans. What
tends to be automatically recorded is what we at first think very
important: the coming and going of the elite or infamous, the
domestic affairs of the King or President, the fads that engross
the rich and famous, the history of battles as told by generals.
But sometimes the foot soldier has a better story than the gener-
al. The diary kept by Samuel Pepys in the 1660s is important
today because Mr. Pepys went about London and recorded what he
saw. He told about the great fire and the coming of the Black
Death and seeing the first Punch and Judy show. His record of
London is far more interesting than the ones kept by historians
engrossed in the intrigues and peccadilloes that swirled around
Charles the Second.
I believe all of us understand, Mr. President, that the
strength of our Nation proceeds from its smaller places, from
small towns in Missouri and Oregon, from short streets in Brook-
lyn and Omaha. We know that it is in the forms of learning
transmitted in families, small communities, the workplace, and in
ethnic groups that we develop the strength of our families, our
communities, and our culture. And we know that the makers of our
culture in the smaller places do not bring their primary docu-
ments to the Library of Congress. They are not invited to
elegant dinners in the great hall of the Jefferson building, or
courted in fundraising drives. Theirs is at least as great a
contribution as the millions raised for other efforts, but it
cannot be measured in dollars. It is the Center's great achieve-
ment, and ongoing strength, that it recognizes the value of the
everyday, and gives it a home where it can be cherished as it
deserves to be.
It is very important, Mr. President, that the present struc-
ture of the Center be maintained. It is important to have a
Board of Trustees selected from all over the Nation and appointed
by the Joint leadership of Congress. They bring to the Center a
diversity of outlook and purpose that cannot be replicated by the
best-intentioned professionals of the Library's career staff. It
is important to have this be a Center for folklife, and not just
another division within the many divisions of the Library. We
could have taken that route in writing the original enabling
legislation, but we were trying to raise up the center out of the
other collections of the Library to be a beacon to the folklife
community across the country. That beacon must be maintained.
If it cannot be maintained at the Library of Congress, then it
should be moved and sustained elsewhere. I believe the Library
is the best home for the Center, but it must get the support ex-
pected in a good home.
Mr. President, I hope that [the] ups and downs of the center's au-
thorization in this Congress will serve as a wake-up call from
the center's board and the center's supporters. I hope the board
will be more attentive to the concerns of the Congressional com-
mittees which oversee the Library's operations. I hope the board
will work hard to supplement federal funding with private
fundraising efforts. I hope the national folklife community will
work with the proper authorizing committees to achieve a
permanent reauthorization for the center. And I hope that the
Library of Congress [will] budget for, and the Congress will pro-
vide, funding sufficient to the center's task.
Mr. President, I thank Senator Mack for his cooperation and
support in this matter, and I yield the floor.
--
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Steve Goldfield :<{ {>: ste...@uclink.berkeley.edu