Fife Folklore Archives

The Fife Folklore Archives (FFA) is one of the largest repositories of American folklore in the United States. The FFA is part of Utah State University’s Special Collections and Archives, where the American Folklore Society Manuscript Collection is also housed.

Established in 1972, the Fife Folklore Archives is an integral part of USU’s cultural studies arena and supports the USU Folklore program as well as other academic disciplines at the university. The FFA is named for folklorists Austin E. and Alta S. Fife, Utahans who helped shape the field of folklore and worked to preserve folk expressions of the American West. The archives is home to many folklore and folklife materials, including student fieldwork collections, oral history collections, and book and fieldwork collections from many folklorists.

Using the Fife Folklore Archives

Collections Guide

To identify and locate items of interest in the physical or digital collections, use the Fife Folklore Collections Guide. The guide includes a detailed index of all FFA collections and instructions for searching for item-level finding aids or records in the library catalog.

Visiting the FFA

While some materials are available online as digital collections, most of the FFA can only be accessed and viewed by visiting the Tanner Reading Room (035) in Merrill-Cazier Library. Learn more about visiting and using Special Collections and Archives.

Digital Collections in the FFA

Browse collections of digitized and born-digital folklore collections. Use the collection index to identify collections that have been digitized. For help searching, refer to collection finding aids or contact scweb@usu.edu.