The conservation treatment of this portion of the Woody Guthrie Archives will dramatically increase researchers’ access to this treasure trove of American cultural history.

Nora Guthrie, daughter of Woody
Guthrie and the driving force behind the preservation of her father's significant creative legacy, discusses one of his illustrated journals with NEDCC staff.

NEDCC's Director of Paper Conservation Walter Newman examines a page from one of Woody Guthrie's scrapbooks prior to conservation treatment. The scrapbooks contain photographs, drawings, telegrams, ticket stubs, postcards, and other ephemera documenting Guthrie's travels among
the music greats of the 1940s and '50s.

Woody Guthrie Archives -
A Cultural Legacy Preserved

The Northeast Document Conservation Center
Helps Preserve Access to Original Materials
at the Woody Guthrie Archives

Many visitors to the Woody Guthrie Archives are powerfully moved when they find themselves sitting
in the presence of manuscripts in Guthrie’s handwriting, his original artwork, and other unique ephemera that he carefully pasted into scrapbooks over the years.

The extensive and eclectic collection is now more accessible to musicians, artists, researchers, and others who come to the Archives to find inspiration
while “sitting with Woody.”

Due to the preservation efforts of dedicated archivists and administration at the nonprofit Woody Guthrie Archives, these original materials will remain available for future generations of researchers of American culture.

Woody Guthrie was not only a prolific and iconic songwriter and documenter of American culture from the 1930s through the 1950s, he also produced a vast creative legacy of artwork, journals, notebooks, letters, and detailed scrapbooks. When he died in 1967 of Huntington’s Disease, he left nearly 3,000 songs unrecorded.

READ THE COMPLETE STORY . . .