American Folklore Society Ethnographic Thesaurus

search tips

Basic Searching You may search based on any number of single terms, or a phrase surrounded by double quotes. Advanced Searching wildcard searches To perform a single character wildcard search, use the "?" symbol. To perform a multiple character wildcard search use the "*" symbol. Wildcard searches for the first character are not currently supported. fuzzy searches To perform a fuzzy search, append the tilde, "~" symbol to a search term. For instance, "roam~" will find records with the term "roam" but also records with terms like "road" or even "rom". proximity search To locate two terms that appear within a certain distance of each other, you may put the terms in quotes followed by a tilde "~" symbol and then number of terms that may appear between them. For example, "egg spoon" will only return records that contain that exact phrase, but "egg spoon"~3 will also include things like "egg and spoon race". boolean searches To perform searches using the boolean AND, OR and NOT operators, simply include those terms in upper case. You may group operators using parentheses as in "(squash OR tennis) NOT vegetables".

About the ET

The AFS Ethnographic Thesaurus is a searchable online vocabulary that can be used to improve access to information about folklore, ethnomusicology, ethnology, and related fields. The American Folklore Society developed the Thesaurus in cooperation with the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress; the work was supported by a generous grant from the Scholarly Communications Program of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The AFS Ethnographic Thesaurus is a web-based resource that is available to the public. When significant portions of the AFS 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 should read as follows: American Folklore Society. AFS Ethnographic Thesaurus Online. http://openfolklore.org/et/

Support for the AFS Ethnographic Thesaurus

Support for the development of the Ethnographic Thesaurus was provided by:

• A major grant from the Scholarly Communications Program of 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
• The Digital Library Program at Indiana University

History of the AFS 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 (members listed below) consists of 13 members who have archival, museum, and library experience and represent the fields of folklore, cultural anthropology, ethnomusicology, and library science.

AFS Ethnographic Thesaurus Development Staff, June 1, 2004 - June 1, 2007

David Batty, Lexicographer
Jill Ann Johnson, Subject Specialist
Camilla H. Mortensen, Subject Specialist
Kristin Cooper Rainey, Database Manager/Administrator

AFS Ethnographic Thesaurus Advisory Board Members, June 1, 2004 - June 1, 2007

Co-chairs: Michael Taft, Head of the Archive, and Catherine Hiebert Kerst, Folklife Specialist/Archivist, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington DC

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

Technology

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.

In the summer of 2011, the Indiana University Digital Library Program under the direction of IUScholarWorks and the Open Folklore project developed and a web search and browse application for the thesaurus content. The thesaurus content is preserved in the DLP's Fedora repository and delivered using a custom Java web application incorporating Apache Lucene-based search functionality.