Administrative Information
Provenance
On September 12, 2001, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress sent an email to folklorists and other ethnographers across the nation asking them to record the thoughts and feelings expressed by individuals and communities following the terrorist attacks of September 11. This project echoes one conducted sixty years earlier, on December 8, 1941, when Alan Lomax, then in charge of the Archive of American Folk Song, sent an urgent telegram to folklorists around the country to collect "man on the street" reactions to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the subsequent declaration of war by the United States.
Within a week after the September 12 notice was sent, collection materials began to arrive at the Library of Congress. Mail delivery to the Library was abruptly interrupted from October 2001-May 2002, due to the discovery of envelopes containing anthrax in the Hart Senate Office Building, a part of the Capitol complex. During that time, items received via U.S. postal mail were sent offsite to be irradiated in order to rid them of possible anthrax contamination. When the mail delivery to the Library resumed, and collection materials finally began to arrive at the Center, fewer than one percent of items were discovered to be severely damaged or destroyed by the irradiation process. Attempts were made to contact donors of these items and some were able to provide information about the content of their interviews. The destroyed materials remain a part of the collection. Because of the mail delay, donations were accepted through 2002, as long as the materials were reflective of immediate reactions from the fall of 2001.
Processing History
This collection received much media attention in the fall of 2001 which prompted some immediate, but minimal, processing of the collection. Release forms and other manuscript materials were organized according to the donating institution's or individual's name. Some reference tapes were also made at this time. In addition, Ann Hoog, the curator of this collection, created an Access database to assist with the organization of and access to the materials. Data entry and some initial processing were done by Ann Hoog, and American Folklife Center interns, Tatiana Omeltchenko and Darryl Gonzalez; volunteer, Howard Kramer; and digital conversion specialists, John Barton and Myron Briggs. The processing was completed by Rosemary Graham and Valda Morris-Slack in 2003.
Location
The collection can be requested in the Folklife Reading Room, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.
Online Content
Significant portions of this collection are available as an online resource titled September 11, 2001 Documentary Project compiled by the National Digital Library Program of the Library of Congress, https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/collafc.af000016.
Online Content
Selections from this and other Library of Congress September 11 collections can be found in the online exhibit, Witness and Response: September 11 Acquisitions at the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/911.
Preferred Citation
September 11, 2001 Documentary Project Collection (AFC 2001/015), Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.