The Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews Digital Library

The Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews Digital Library contains over 200 digitized reel-to-reel audiotapes that record the fieldwork of two of America’s foremost Romance medievalists, Samuel Armistead (University of California, Davis) and Joseph Silverman (University of California, Santa Cruz), who gathered ballads and other folk literature in the Hispanic tradition as preserved by Sephardic Jews. Their fieldwork extended over several decades in the latter half of the twentieth century and spanned three continents and many dozens of informants. The audio recordings can be heard in their entirety or they can be searched for specific ballads across a number of different tapes. The transcriptions of the ballads and other folk material can also be searched for words and phrases. The digital library is now permanently hosted by the University of Illinois library and can be accessed at http://sephardifolklit.illinois.edu.