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, the section convener 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.