GENERAL FILES / 1979

Most of the records of the New Jersey Folk Festival are grouped chronologically by festival year as general files. These files document the preparations, the day of the event, and follow-up activities of the festival and related programs with correspondence, area reports, background materials, and notes by the festival staff. The records also include documentation of the folk festival course in the Rutgers American Studies Department, related financial records, newspaper clippings, photographs, T-shirts and sound recordings.

The most comprehensive portions of the records are the reports of the New Jersey Folk Festival student coordinators, who were sometimes called "officers." Each student coordinator handed in a report of the year's activities, which also served as the term paper for the course at Rutgers. Reports were filed by the following coordinators: Art, Children's Area, Crafts, Food, General, Grants, Journal, Music, and Publicity, among others. (The number and responsibilities of the coordinators changed over the years.) A report typically describes the timeline and the activities in the particular area of responsibility and as such provided invaluable guidance for the next year's student officers. The number of reports varies by year. Length, content, and accompanying material also vary. Regular monthly reports, such as the coordinators' reports and grant budget reports, are provided in a few years only. Many years also feature a comprehensive report of all activities submitted by the general coordinator, while some years after 2000 include a comprehensive festival manual.

The level of documentation for each festival varies. For most of the 1980s and 1990s, and for some later years, the documentation spans the entire year of preparation: from the preliminary steps of determining theme proposals (occasionally as early as years in advance), the collection of background material, and the course organization through the concluding evaluation of activities in comprehensive reports from each area of the festival organization.

Other folders include background materials (on participants and thematically-related festivals), advertising (flyers, brochures, posters), business records (invoices, contracts, beer license), public relations documents, area correspondence, photographs, and journals/publications as well as course syllabi. In the early years, there are some materials related to New Jersey Committee for the Humanities grant programs. There are also scrapbooks for the years 2005, 2007, and 2008 and several commemorative T-shirts from 2004 to 2012 (with gaps). Additional materials present consist of sound recordings, including reel-to-reel audiotapes of musical presentations at New Jersey Folk Festivals from 1979 to 1985 and copies of interviews with at least two musicians.

For several years, the American Studies Department and Professor Gillespie worked with the New Jersey Folklore Society to produce the journal New Jersey Folklore, later known as New Jersey Folklife. Students also worked to edit the journal, and records relating to it are found in this collection.

A small quantity of folk art is documented in the festival's records, in the form of questionnaires and photographs relating to about a dozen pre-1940 American quilts. These items were brought to the 1985 festival by their private owners as part of a quilt sharing event.