Evening includes reception, panel discussions beginning at 7 p.m.
A new exhibit titled "Fruits of Their Labors: The Orchards in Utah Valley" will open Friday, July 30, at 7 p.m. in the level one atrium of the Harold B. Lee Library on the Brigham Young University campus.
A reception will be held that evening and the public is invited to attend this free event. The exhibit will be on display through the first week of September.
Presented by the annual Library of Congress American Folklife Center Field School, the exhibition will feature the conclusions of five student groups who studied various aspects of maintaining an orchard in Utah Valley.
Each group will present a panel with a different focus. The five focuses include values important to orchard workers, various aspects of church-affiliated orchards, family orchards, fruit stands and different ways of preserving and eating fruit.
The exhibit is a result of a field school conducted July 11-31 in which students from Utah and across the United States met with and interviewed more than 35 people involved in growing orchards in Utah Valley.
The field school allows students the opportunity of gaining practical experience in ethnography, said Kristi Bell, BYU archivist in the Lee Library.
Two of the students are employees of the National Library and Archives of Egypt, which is interested in opening an Egyptian Folklife Center modeled after the American center. The students have been sent to learn more about the American center's work.
The exhibition also marks the beginning of the Utah Heritage Project, a long-term study looking at different facets of life in Utah. The project is part of a larger focus conducted state by state within the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.
This is the first time the project has been co-sponsored by a university and used university students to do the research.
For more information, call Kristi Bell at (801) 422-6041.
Writer: Thomas Grover
