Download Smith College / Smithsonian Institution Internship Program 2013

Smith College / Smithsonian Institution Internship Program
2013 Research Project Proposal
Name of Supervisor(s): Stephanie Smith
Department or Office: Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives & Collections
Phone Number: (202) 633-6439
Museum/Unit: CFCH
Email Address: [email protected]
1. Please provide information on your research and/or the work of your office:
The Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections is the home of several major recording collections
and papers including Folkways Records, and also houses the written, audio, and visual records of
projects and exhibits sponsored by the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, most notably the
Smithsonian Folklife Festival. (Please see
http://www.folklife.si.edu/center/archives/archives_collections.html for additional information on some
of our collections.) The archives have strong holdings of world ethnic music traditions, early country
music and bluegrass, blues, and the Folk Revival on Folkways and other labels available for in-house
listening and research, as well as documentation (photos, audio and video tapes) from the Smithsonian
Folklife Festival going back to 1967. The Archives also have several significant photograph collections.
In 2008, the Smithsonian’s paper conservator Nora Lockshin conducted a preservation survey on the
paper collections in the Rinzler Archives, resulting in a detailed report with recommendations for
preservation and access. The archivists are engaged in a long-term initiative to improve the overall
health of the paper collections by rehousing and more fully processing them. The archivists are currently
implementing preservation measures recommended by Lockshin in the preservation survey. As part of
our broad collections processing and preservation initiative, the archivists are focusing on the creation or
enhancement of inventories and finding aids for various collections and sub-collections, as well as
preparing collection for digitization. The present goal for the Archives is to get more collections
information online so that this information is more accessible to researchers and the general public.
2. Describe the project (include duties, nature and scope of the work), and indicate any particular
academic background or specific courses needed as preparation:
The duties of this project will be to assist the processing archivist with the arrangement, preservation
rehousing, and description of the paper records of the Ralph Rinzler Papers and Audiorecordings, 19501994. This collection documents the life of Ralph Rinzler and his professional activities as Director of
Field Programs for the Newport Folk Festival, Director of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and the
Office of Folklife Programs, and the Smithsonian Institution's Assistant Secretary for Public Service.
The collection includes personal papers, business records, correspondence, notes, photographs,
audiotapes and field recordings. It is a large and complex collection, and only portions of it have been
described to the desired level so far.
Ralph Rinzler (1934-1994) was one of the twentieth century’s more notable traditional music
impresarios. Born in Passaic, New Jersey, Rinzler was interested in music at an early age and as an adult
became actively involved in the folk revival while attending Swarthmore College. Throughout the 1950s
and ‘60s, Rinzler worked as a musician, manager, and event organizer. He played mandolin for four
years with the bluegrass band the Greenbriar Boys, while at times touring with singer Joan Baez. He
also studied, recorded, and worked with performers such as Doc Watson (whom he “discovered”) and
Bill Monroe, both of whom gained international recognition in part through his efforts. In 1964, Rinzler
accepted the position of Director of Field Programs at the Newport Folk Foundation, which involved the
planning and programming of the Newport Folk Festival. In 1967 he came to the Smithsonian to become
a co-director of the annual Festival of American Folklife and eventually the founding director of what is
now the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. With his evolving role at the Smithsonian, Rinzler
was appointed Assistant Secretary for Public Service in 1983 and Assistant Secretary Emeritus in 1990.
One of the many capstones of Rinzler’s career was facilitating the 1987 acquisition of Moses Asch’s
Folkways Records, establishing Asch’s long-term legacy in what is now Smithsonian Folkways. For
more information about Rinzler’s background, work, and archival collection, please visit the SIRIS
catalog record and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage website.
The nature and scope of the work will include a significant amount of hands-on work allowing the intern
to apply standard archival principles while encouraging intellectual assessment of the historical and
practical importance of the collection, placing it in a larger social and cultural context. This project is
ideal for an intern with an interest in archival work as well as coursework covering vernacular music
traditions, popular music, music history, ethnomusicology, American studies, social history, folklore,
visual media, or photography. Experience in a library or archives would be helpful, but not required.
3. Please describe possible research products an intern might develop, either from the project or the
work of your office, to fulfill the academic requirement of the Smith College Program:
One possible research product for the Rinzler papers includes expanding content on the current finding
aid, including information about the collection and its scope, Rinzler’s biography, and the organization
of the collection with a listing of its components. Background research providing contextual information
about the collection is part of the research process in expanding the finding aid and may involve both
interviewing people and standard online and library research processes. The updated information would
be a product that could be displayed online through the Smithsonian Institution Research Information
System (http://www.siris.si.edu). Alternately, the project could be a research paper about Ralph Rinzler
or an aspect of his work, based on the materials in the collection and other Rinzler materials housed
elsewhere in the Smithsonian.
The intern would also have the opportunity to create one or more SI Collections Blog posts about the
collection, the significance of Rinzler’s work, and his legacy within and beyond the Institution. You can
see an example in this blog post from 2011 about Doc Watson with whom Rinzler worked closely, based
on a large number of materials about him in the Rinzler Papers: http://sisiris.blogspot.com/2011/03/voice-from-mountains.html.