Jesse Johnston

Music and humanities, archives, digital preservation, information policy, and ethnomusicology.

Writing

Writing by Type

Scholarly & Peer-Reviewed Writing

Articles

  • “Archivists as Peers in Digital Public History.” Chapter co-authored with Trevor Owens in Handbook of Digital Public History, ed. Serge Noiret and Mark Tebeau, pp. 149–164. DOI: 10.1515/9783110430295-013. (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, ).
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  • “Building Policy & Capacity: Launching the U.S. Library of Congress Digital Collections Management Compendium.” Co-authored with Trevor Owens, Kristy Darby, Pedro Gonzalez-Fernandez, and Camille Salas. In Proceedings of iPres2021 (Beijing, China and online, ). ()
  • “Using the Library of Congress’ Web Cultures Web Archive: Archiving Digital Expressive Culture and Building Collections.” Co-authored with Trevor Owens and Nicole Saylor. New Directions in Folklore 18, no. 1 (): 1–23. ()
  • “Preserving Anthropology’s Digital Record: CoPAR in the Age of Electronic Fieldnotes, Data Curation, and Community Sovereignty.” DOI: https://doi.org/10.17723/aarc-82-02-01. The American Archivist 82, no. 2 (). ()
  • “Extensive Extensions: Exploring File Extensions in Library of Congress Collections.” Co-authored with Mark Cooper, Aly DesRochers, Camille Salas, and Trevor Owens. In Proceedings of iPres 2019 (Amsterdam, ). ()
  • “Messages Sent, and Received? Changing Perspectives and Policies on US Federal Email as Record and the Limits of Archival Accountability.” Co-authored with David Wallace and Ricardo L. Punzalan. DOI: 10.1007/s10502-019-09318-8. Archival Science 19 (). ()
  • “European-American Music: Czech- and Slovak-American.” In The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd edition, ed. Charles Hiroshi Garrett (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, ).
  • “Digitizing the American Black Journal News Program.” Archival Outlook (), 7 & 27.
  • “‘Unmelted’: Music and Instruments of Czech Immigrants to Texas.” (Published in Czech.) Národopisná revue 21, no. 1 (): 32–41. ()
  • “The Cimbál (Cimbalom) and Folk Music in Moravian Slovakia and Valachia.” Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society 36 (): 78–117. ()
  • “Local Sounds? Fieldwork, YouTube, and the ‘Romanian’ Cimbalom in Moravian Slovakia.” In Czech and Slovak Culture in International Context (University of South Bohemia, ). ()
  • “Instrumental Roots: The Dulcimer in the Baca Band.” (Published in Czech and English.) In Searching for Roots: The Unbroken Path, ed. Lucie Uhlíková and Irena Přibylová ().
  • “The Cimbál (Cimbalom) in Moravia: Cultural Organology and Interpretive Communities.” Ph.D. dissertation (Musicology), University of Michigan (). ()
  • “Performing Českost (Czechness): Polka Music and Ethnicity at Wisconsin Czech-American Festivals.” In Moravia from a World Perspective, ed. Miloslav Rechcígl (Palacký University, ). ()

Invited Lectures

Conference Papers & Presentations

2024

  • “Encoding Reparative Description: Promoting Archival Metadata Revision through Data Visualization.” Research poster, DublinCore Metadata Initiative Conference, Toronto, Ontario, October 2024. (poster in pdf)

2022

  • “Strategies and Tactics in Sound Archives: Researchers and Archivists in Ethnomusicology Archives,” Telling Stores: An International Conference on Digital Music Archives, Manchester Digital Music Archive and Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, U.K., November 2022.
  • “Amplifying Unheard Voices: Assessing the Program Revision and Implementation,” with Ricardo L. Punzalan, Digitizing Hidden Collections Symposium, Digital Library Federation, Baltimore, Maryland, October 2022.

2019

  • Invited Presenter, “Library Carpentry @ LOC,” Annual Project Directors’ Meeting of the National Digital Newspapers Program, National Endowment for the Humanities and Library of Congress, Washington, DC. September 2019.
  • Panelist, “Music Advocacy, Community Collaborations, and Contemporary Identity Politics,” 45th World Conference of the International Council for Traditional Music, Bangkok, Thailand. July 2019.
  • Invited Delegate, National Conference on Public and Applied Ethnomusicology, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and held at the American Folklife Center, Washington, DC. May 2019.

2018

  • Panelist, “Ethnomusicology and Career Diversity,” Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Albuquerque, New Mexico. (presentation slides, presentation text)
  • “Identifying Test Sets in Federal Web Archives.” Ad-hoc lightning talk with Trevor Owens, iPres 2018 Conference, Boston, Massachusetts.
  • “Collaborating to Process a Web Archives Digital Backlog.” Research forum platform presentation, Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists, Washington, DC. (presentation slides, link to forum proceedings)
  • “Messages Sent, and Received? Assessing Accountability and Its Limits through U.S. Federal Records Email Policy.” Co-authored with Ricardo Punzalan and David Wallace. ICHORA-8: International Conference on the History of Records and Archives 2018, “Archives in a Changing Climate,” Melbourne, Australia. (presentation slides)
  • Panelist, “Crossing Fields, Crossing (Career) Paths: A Roundtable on Careers for Ethnomusicologists.” Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology, College Park, Maryland.

2016

  • “Ethnomusicologists and Practice in the Archives.” Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Washington, DC. (presentation slides)

2012

  • “Old-Fashioned and Outmoded? An Ethnographic Assessment of Sound Archives in Ethnomusicologies.” Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, New Orleans, Louisiana. (presentation slides in pdf)
  • “Of Singing Trees and Roaring Rivers: Sounding Out South Moravian Sound Terrains.” Midwest Slavic Conference, Columbus, Ohio.
  • “Tensions of Managing and Using: A Qualitative Study of Audio Archiving.” Research forum platform presentation, Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists, San Diego, California. (link to forum proceedings)
  • Panelist, "Evaluating the Success of Digital Audiovisual Preservation Projects in Libraries." Panel at QuasiCon 2012: The Future of Libraries, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 21 January.

2011

  • “Digital Preservation and the American Black Journal at MATRIX.” Research poster, annual meeting of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, New Orleans, Louisiana.
  • “Preserving the American Black Journal at MATRIX: Developing a Long-Term Strategy to Preserve and Access Online Digital Video.” Research poster, Archives 360°, Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists, Chicago, Illinois.
  • “Ideologies of Music and Postsocialist Possibilities in South Moravia.” 41st World Conference of the International Council for Traditional Music, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. (Panel organizer, “Musical Tradition and Transition in Global Postsocialisms.”)
  • “Performance as Archives in Southeast Asia: An Ethnomusicological Perspective.” National Conference of the Association for Asian Studies, Honolulu, Hawai'i.

2010

  • “Sound Terrains: ‘Soundscape,’ Place, and Nature in South Moravia.” Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Los Angeles, California. (presentation slides in pdf)
  • “Moravia as Global Crossroads: Local and ‘World’ Music in the Southeast Czech Republic.” Central and Eastern Europe: Musical Crossroads? Annual Meeting of the Russian and East European Music Study Group, British Association of Slavonic and East European Studies, Faculty of Music, Oxford University.
  • “Radio Brno, the Brněnský krúžek (Brno Circle) and Folk Creativity in Moravia.” Czech and Slovak Music and Related Arts conference, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan.

2009

  • “Instilling ‘True American Spirit’? Music at the Culion Leprosarium [Philippines].” Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Mexico City, Mexico.
  • “The Traditional and the Global: Understanding ‘World Music’ in Moravia.” World Conference of the International Council for Traditional Music, Durban, South Africa.

2008

  • “Making ‘World Music’ Local in Moravia.” Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Middletown, Connecticut.
  • “Instrumental Roots: The Dulcimer in the Baca Band.” Fourth International Musicology Colloquium, Náměšť nad Olšavou, Czech Republic.
  • “Classical Folk Music: Broadcasting Folk Culture in Communist Moravia.” Midwest Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Ypsilanti, Michigan.

2007

  • “‘People’s Music’ and Modernism: Leoš Janáček and Folkloric Performance.” Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, New Orleans, Louisiana. Awarded the Louise Cuyler prize by the Department of Musicology, University of Michigan.
  • “Local Sounds? Fieldwork, YouTube, and the ‘Romanian’ Cimbalom in Moravian Slovakia.” Midwest Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Terre Haute, Indiana.

2004

  • “Melodies of Ethnicity: Czechness and Polka Music at Czech-American Festivals.” Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Tucson, Arizona.

Reviews

  • Book Review of Prague Soundscapes, ed. Zuzana Jurková et al. (Karolinum Press, 2014). Yearbook for Traditional Music 49 (2017).
  • Book Review of Dangdut Stories: A Social and Musical History of Indonesia’s Most Popular Music by Andrew N. Weintraub (Oxford Univ. Press, 2010). Notes 68 (2011).
  • Book Review of Music of Central Java by Benjamin Brinner (Oxford Univ. Press, 2008). Asian Music 42 (2011).
  • Book Review of Sounds of the Silk Road: Musical Instruments of Asia, text by Mitchell Clark (Boston, 2005). Asian Music 41 (2010).
  • Book Review of Komentáře [Commentary], vol. 1 of Janáčkovy záznamy hudebního a tanečního folkloru [Janáček’s Records of Musical and Dance Folklore], ed. Jarmila Procházková (Brno, 2006). Kosmas Czechoslovak and Central European Journal 20 (2007).
Updated December 2022
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Public Writing

The following articles were written for a general audience and posted on the websites of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Library of Congress, and the University of Michigan.

University of Michigan

Library of Congress

National Endowment for the Humanities

The preceding pieces, listed in reverse chronological order, are links to Web publications from my tenure at the National Endowment for the Humanities (2013–2017) and the Library of Congress (2018–2020). These aren’t complete without a few thank yous! I was the primary author of the NEH pieces, but they represent significant collaborative efforts and received substantial support from many NEH grantees and NEH editors, particularly Ralph Canevali, Cathleen Tefft, Adriana Cutler, Joel Wurl, and Leah Weinryb Grohsgal. The posts published at Library of Congress were much stronger with input from, and frequent co-authorship with, Kate Murray, Trevor Owens, Aly DesRochers, Jaime Mears, Chase Dooley, Grace Thomas, and Carlyn Osborn.

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Essays

On Data in Humanities Work

These posts explore tools and ideas related to humanities data.

On Research Enhancement & Funding

These posts offer insights for researchers, artists, and performers who may be seeking grants. While of general interest to anyone looking for funding, these essays emphasize federal grant opportunities that support academic research.

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