Open Folklore Looks Ahead to Fall Enhancements

In time for the 2011 American Folklore Society (AFS) meetings in Bloomington, the Open Folklore project team anticipates releasing or announcing several new enhancements to the Open Folklore portal site. Here is a preview of some of what is coming next month.

The next release will see the AFS Ethnographic Thesaurus (ET) out of its current beta testing phase and fully and officially incorporated into the Open Folklore portal. At that point, we will begin developing some how-to materials to help users incorporate the ET into their own projects. The ET will also begin to figure more prominently in the publishing and database work of various projects affiliated with Open Folklore, including IUScholarWorks and The Journal of American Folklore—the flagship journal of the American Folklore Society.

Looking ahead, the fall announcement will also call attention to a range of new folklore studies journal content that is being made available in open access form via several channels—IUScholarWorks, HathiTrust Digital Library, and Google Books. In addition, the availability of additional grey literature materials in folklore studies will be announced and additional websites in the field will be added to the Open Folklore Archive-It collection.

Some small enhancements are also being made to the OF Portal site and we anticipate releasing at least one new educational video to help the community more effectively use the resources being made available through the OF Portal and other parts of the OF project.

The upcoming AFS meetings will also provide opportunities for colleagues to learn more about not only OF but about open access and digital humanities topics in general. With AFS members converging in Bloomington—home to many parts of the OF universe—it is an especially exciting time for the project and the field. OF hopes to see you in Bloomington October 12-15, 2011.