A Message from the Director

Dear Colleague,

John Foley’s death halted a planned initiative to establish an Electronic Archive of Verbal Arts. To honor his memory, the International Society for Studies in Oral Tradition (ISSOT) will undertake to bring that idea to fruition. A first step is to identify archives containing recordings of traditional verbal arts (in all media forms), compile a comprehensive listing of them and post it on the ISSOT website.

We now ask for your help identifying relevant archives worldwide.

We are aware that the American Folklore Society has undertaken such a project on a national United States scale, and we are aware of UNESCO Intangible Heritage, International Council of Archives, EU Digital Libraries Initiative, Phonogrammarchiv, Folklore Archives of Finnish Literature Society, CIRMA, Archivo Menéndez Pidal, and several others, but to the best of our knowledge no comprehensive resource of international scope is currently available. Should we be mistaken, we will be pleased to acknowledge it.

If you are familiar with one or more repositories holding archival materials documenting traditional verbal arts, ISSOT invites you to take a few minutes to tell us the name, location, and contact information (postal address, e-mail, web page). For example: Archives of Traditional Music in Laos, National Library of Laos, P.O. Box 122, Vientiane, Lao PDR. Contact: Thongbang Homsombat (email, web page). Send your response to: .

Thank you for sharing your expertise with us. With your help a thorough inventory of archives worldwide can become a useful resource for all colleagues working in allied fields.

With best wishes,

John Zemke
Professor of Spanish
Romance Languages & Literatures
Director, Center for e-Research,
Director, Center for Studies in Oral Tradition
Editor, Oral Tradition
21 Parker Hall
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65211
Tel 573 882-9720
Fax 574 884-0921
E-mail:
http://oraltradition.org