Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History

Edward D. “Sandy” Ives (September 24, 1925–August 1, 2009), was an internationally renowned pioneer in the field of American Folklore and Oral History. He was the Founder and Director of the Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History (NAFOH), later the Maine Folklife Center.

After joining the faculty of the University of Maine in 1955, Ives began collecting folksongs, music, and stories from Maine and the Maritimes. Through experiential learning, Ives taught his students how to conduct research in folklore and oral history. The interviews his students conducted, and their subsequent papers were incorporated in the archive.

In 2011, original NAFOH materials were sold by the University of Maine to the Library of Congress for long-term preservation. Backup and digital copies of these materials, in addition to materials accessioned by Maine Folklife Center after 2011 were transferred to Fogler Library Special Collections in 2016. The collection contains 3,000 sound tape reals and cassettes, 310 videocassettes, 10,000 photographs, 325,000 manuscripts, and 10 DVDs. Work to provide online open access to the collection is ongoing.