When the Smithsonian Institution acquired Folkways Records from the estate of its founder, Moses Asch, in 1987, it received all of the company’s business papers and files in addition to a complete catalog of its recordings. Among these materials were more than 2,000 envelope files, called “job bags,” containing photographs, artwork, cover text and other production materials for each of Folkways’ distinctive album covers.

Now, researchers from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and the University of Alberta in Canada are collaborating to document and preserve the contents of these job bags. Recently, Margaret Asch, daughter-in-law of Moses Asch, and Lorna Arndt, project manager of the University of Alberta’s FolkwaysAlive! program, visited the Smithsonian’s Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections in Washington, D.C., where the Folkways Records collection is housed, to launch a careful examination of this material.

Asch and Arndt examined cover material for some 200 Folkways albums, documenting items, making note of the importance of the items in each file and noting the presence of anything in need of conservation. At the start, Nora Lockshin, paper conservator at the Smithsonian Institution Archives, briefed Asch and Arndt on the proper handling of archival materials. Further work will be continued by interns under the supervision of Stephanie Smith, assistant archivist at the Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections.

“It is evident that Moses Asch put a great deal of effort into the materials that went along with the recordings,” Asch says. “He felt his recordings were documents, and that every one needed its own documentation and visual art to create a complete understanding.”

In 1985, Moses Asch donated a collection of Folkways record albums to the University of Alberta, where his son, Michael, worked as an anthropologist. His donation was the genesis of the university’s FolkwaysAlive! program.