Fife Folklore Archives Curator

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Randy Williams is folklore curator and oral history specialist at Utah State University's Special Collections & Archives. Along with managing the world-renowned Fife Folklore Archives, she directs USU's community-based fieldwork projects, bringing the voice of diverse peoples from the Inter-Mountain West into the Archives. At present she is working on the Ranch Family Documentation Project. Most recent fieldwork activity includes:

Logan Canyon Land Use Management Oral History Collection
Latino/Latina Voices Project and Latino/a Voices Project Digital Collection
USU Veterans History Project
Living Traditions of the Bear River Area

Along with Elisaida Mendez, Williams was honored with a 2009 Human Ties Award from the Utah Humanities Council for the Latino/Latina Voices Project and she recieved a 2002 UHC Merit Award for Living Traditions of the Bear River Heritage Area.

Summer 2009, Williams curated the “Books and Buckaroos: USU Cowboy Poetry Collection” exhibit that highlights USU’s involvement with the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering since its beginning. Her next exhibit “Bells: Connecting Animals, People and Land,” co-curated with Barbara Middleton, opened 28 October and runs through 22 January 2010 in the Merrill-Cazier Library. The exhibit is the outgrowth of oral history work.

Williams is Archival Liaison for the American Folklore Society, past section convener (2009-12) for the American Folklore Society Archives and Library Section and past board member of the Folklore Society of Utah. She is the folklore subject librarian at the Merrill-Cazier Library, a member of the USU Digital Library Committee, editor-at-large for Marginalia (the newsletter for the Friends of the Library) and a member of USU’s Common Literature Experience Committee, serving as chair in 2009.

Along with Elaine Thatcher, she produced Folksongs of the Beehive State: Early Field Recordings of Utah and Mormon Music. Activity in the Arts in Education Program led to Folklore and Folk Art Resource Guide, co-sponsored by the Utah Arts Council. She co-directed the Fife Folklore Conference for five years, created and directed USU's Kinship Conference and taught university courses in folklore. Areas of academic interest include community-based oral history work, belief systems, archiving, diversity awareness and Mormon, family and public folklore.

Photo: Randy Williams at the Utah Humanities Council’s 21st Annual Human Ties Award Ceremony, 10 September 2009, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Photo courtesy Utah Humanities Council.