The American Folklore Society (AFS) has been working with member Iryna Voloshyna to assist colleagues in Ukraine who request cloud storage for backups of field research materials. We presently have over 50 individuals in Ukraine connected to a secure folder within a dedicated storage drive for this work. We’ve been working this week to expand our capacity for storage and security needs by working with a group of partners on this effort. If you have colleagues in Ukraine who need our support, they can reach out to us on this page: https://americanfolkloresociety.org/afs-condemns-the-war-in-ukraine-and-stands-with-all-who-oppose-this-violence/.
On the page listed above are ways individuals can get involved, including donating money to relief orgs and working with host institutions to house refugees. Scholars at Risk is actively seeking host organizations for scholar placement. https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/get-involved-institutions/
Some of our partners in our fieldwork backup storage work are at the Ukrainian American Archives and Museum in Detroit, and the Detroit-area Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus was honored with a 2022 Heritage Award by the Michigan Traditional Arts Program. (http://traditionalarts.msu.edu/programs/michigan-heritage-awards/mha-awardee/?kid=A2-369-85)
We are networked with a group of librarians and archivists who are working to save digital content from heritage websites. You can learn more about that here: www.sucho.org<http://www.sucho.org> Some of the members of this group are with the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute who are helping with the web data rescue and also offering backups to researchers via Microsoft sharepoint sites. They know about AFS’s efforts, and we are directing folks to them as needed when data uploads fall outside of the scope we’ve determined for our work. The web data rescue work is being organized via the Slavic Digital Humanities group (somehow associated with the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies and also the Music Library Association) and has amassed 200 volunteers to help. There’s a slack channel for this librarian/DH work if anyone wants to join the efforts. Iryna is helping with this work also.
The Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative is actively assisting museum staff and heritage collection salvage needs on the ground. There work is fast-moving and makes use of the international museum network, but you can read more about SCRI here: https://culturalrescue.si.edu/.
Our colleagues at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies have a collection of resources for assisting displaced scholars and students: https://www.aseees.org/resources/help-displaced-scholars-ukraine
Colleagues at Indiana University have shared these resources for supporting those displaced or in need, as well as teaching/learning aids: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VPvwMzaScGbAG5sBMhFoS8RC3zZy0JbsxVK35NTuGI4/edit?usp=sharing.
Jessica A. Turner, PhD, Executive Director, American Folklore Society
