Scope and Content
The Working in Paterson Project Collection consists of manuscript materials, sound recordings, graphic materials, and artifacts collected during the Working in Paterson Project conducted by the American Folklife Center in 1994. The study was part of the federal Urban History Initiative (UHI) program sponsored in Congress by U.S. Senator Frank R. Lautenberg and administered by the National Park Service's Mid-Atlantic Regional Office. The four-month project, conducted between June and September 1994, explored occupational heritage and culture in Paterson, New Jersey, a city that is considered the cradle of the Industrial Revolution in America. The goal of the project was to examine how the idea of work intersects with other themes, such as family, ethnicity, gender, neighborhood, and change over time. The Paterson community yielded several additional themes that reflect both the history of industry in the United States and the specific experience of Patersonians. These themes include the continuity and change of manufacturing over time; the manufacturing process; the textile industry; industrial architecture; the impact of labor unions; diversity in the workplace; the ethnography of Watson Machine International; Paterson's distinctive food tradition, the Hot Texas Wiener; the role of agricultural occupations in urban areas; and work, family, and home.
In addition to Paterson, supplementary documentation was conducted in the following locations in New Jersey: Bloomfield, Clifton, Haledon, Hawthorne, Pequannock, Totowa, West Paterson, and Woodbridge. Documented ethnic groups include: African Americans, Arab Americans, Colombian Americans, Cuban Americans, Dominican Americans, Greek Americans, Hispanic Americans, Honduran Americans, Irish Americans, Italian Americans, Peruvian Americans, Polish Americans, and Puerto Ricans.
AFC Folklife Specialist, David A. Taylor, directed the field research that was carried out by folklorists Tom Carroll (a Paterson native), Robert McCarl, Susan Levitas, and Timothy Lloyd, documentary photographer Martha Cooper, and Taylor himself. The research team interviewed active and retired workers from important local industries, photographed workers and work-related events, and documented other aspects of Paterson's occupational heritage. Under the terms of the cooperative agreement between the National Park Service (NPS) and the American Folklife Center, the AFC developed and administered a study of occupational culture in Paterson, New Jersey, produced a draft report with the findings of the study and recommendations for future research and cultural programming, and provided the NPS with a reference copy of the field data.
The field research resulted in a multi-format collection. The manuscript materials document the project from 1993, when the initial planning began, to 2002, when the project materials were used to create the online presentation, "Working in Paterson: Occupational Heritage in an Urban Setting," http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wiphtml/pthome.html. The manuscript materials include "Resource Tools," which include databases and tables created by the processing and digitizing staff to summarize information from the fieldworkers' logs, sound recordings, and graphic materials. Also found are various publications, including books, articles, and ephemera that provide background material on Paterson and urban folklife. Documents regarding the planning, administration, and promotion of the project are available in this series with field notes, graphic materials logs, sound recordings logs, and reports and products from the research.
As noted earlier, this series contains two "post-fieldwork" sections. The first includes publications and ephemera the AFC continued to collect after the fieldwork was completed. The second section includes materials generated by the National Digital Library staff at the Library of Congress while creating the online presentation.
This collection contains 90 original sound recordings, both analog and digital audiotapes. The sound recordings are arranged alphabetically by fieldworker's name and then by tape number. The sound recordings contain interviews with residents of Paterson, New Jersey, and the surrounding area, as well as interviews by David Taylor with U.S. Senator Frank R. Lautenberg and Congressman Bill Pascrell. Almost all of the sound recordings have accompanying audio logs. Information on whether or not an audio log exists for a particular sound recording can be found in the database, "WIP Sound Recordings Collection," which is on a zip disk in folder 1, and in hard copy in folder 4.
The Working in Paterson project produced 6,621 graphic materials, which include black-and white negatives, black-and-white photographic prints, color slides, and color photocopies. Black-and-white contact sheets are available to researchers in the Folklife Reading Room. The graphic materials are arranged alphabetically by fieldworker name, then numerically by slide tray or by contact sheet, and then numerically by individual image. While each of the fieldworkers took photographs, documentary photographer Martha Cooper produced the majority of the images in this series. Fieldworkers created logs for the graphic images that are summarized in the database, "WIP Graphic Materials Collection," (available on a zip disk in folder 1).
It should be noted that Martha Cooper's black-and-white image logs only provide information from roll WIP-MC-B001 to roll WIP-MC-B016, but her black-and-white images proceed to WIP-MC-B036. Using her color slides, it was possible to discern the subjects of these unidentified black-and-white images, but there is no way to be positive of the date these photographs were taken. Martha Cooper's color slides WIP-MC-C097-05 through WIP-MCC114-03 are all labeled with a red "X" because the photographer deemed them to not be among the best of the images. They were ultimately added to the collection because of the value of information they contain. Again, these images do not have corresponding logs, but were identified by comparison with logged color slides, and can also be found in the database.
The electronic media in this collection includes one zip disk, 174 CD-ROMs, and 29 3.5-inch high-density diskettes. The zip disk contains the databases for sound recordings and graphic materials and the contents of 38 diskettes of the fieldworkers' logs and field notes. The CD-ROMs contain digital files used in the online presentation. In July 2004, 29 3.5-inch diskettes were found and were added to the collection.
The final series contains 15 artifacts and ephemeral pieces donated by Paterson informants. The artifacts include product samples from work places in Paterson as well as union memorabilia.