About the Collection

The Pennsylvania Center for Folklore Collection (formerly the Center for Pennsylvania Culture Studies Collection) was transferred in December 2008 from the Center for Pennsylvania Culture Studies to Archives and Special Collections in the Penn State Harrisburg Library.  Since its formal transfer, the archives has managed and preserved the following four series of records:

1) Mac E. Barrick Pennsylvania Folk Belief Collection, which consists of over 100,000 original index cards; 

2) John Yetter Collection of Steelton, Pennsylvania, that includes over 2,000 original photographs and materials pertaining to the Steelton community and its connection to the Bethlehem Steel Corporation;

3)  Archives of Pennsylvania Folklife and Ethnography that features several thousand manuscripts, recordings, and photographs that document field-collected folk traditions and cultural behavior; and

4) the American Studies Resource Collection, which includes vertical file information relating to the history and practice of American and Pennsylvania studies.

Finding Aid for the Collection

This collection is being processed, so the finding aid is still in development.  Please contact Heidi Abbey Moyer, Archivist and Humanities Reference Librarian and Coordinator of Archives and Special Collections, at hna2@psu.edu for more assistance.

About the Pennsylvania Center for Folklore

The Pennsylvania Center for Folklore, formerly the Center for Pennsylvania Culture Studies, was founded in 1990 to "promote greater knowledge and appreciation for diverse peoples and cultural traditions, especially in southcentral Pennsylvania."  In 2017, the Center changed its name to the Pennsylvania Center for Folklore to "mark its refined and expanded mission to study and educate about folklore across the state, region, and nation."  For more than twenty-five years, the Center has developed research, research collections, courses, degrees, and events related to the study of folklore and folk cultures.  The Center is affiliated with the Penn State Harrisburg School of Humanities and its American Studies program.  The Center maintains several digital projects on its website, including access to digitized records in the Mac E. Barrick Pennsylvania Folk Belief Collection as well as selected photographs from the John Yetter Collection of Steelton, Pennsylvania.