The Library of Congress has chosen a team from the UO’s Labor Education and Research Center as one of four recipients of a national fellowship to fund innovative research.

The award, from the library’s American Folklife Center, will fund a project to survey home health care workers in Oregon and document the occupational culture of people who have become a primary source of health care for the elderly. The UO team will be led by Bob Bussel, history professor and LERC director.

The Archie Green Fellowship in Occupational Folklore will provide almost $34,000 to interview 35 home care workers over the next year. The interviews will be digitally archived at the Library of Congress and the UO, where they will be available to future researchers.

“This is going to have a life beyond this work,” Bussel said.

Other members of the research team include Helen Moss, a LERC senior instructor; Nathan Moore, a recent UO master’s degree recipient in folklore; and Ivan LaFollette, who will be the team’s videographer. The interviews will be conducted with support from the Service Employees International Union Local 503, which represents more than 11,000 home care workers in Oregon.

Bussel said the interviews are expected to yield insights in the occupational culture of home care work and expand public knowledge of a job that is only beginning to receive greater scholarly and social attention. He noted that many home care workers develop close relationships with clients and often come to be seen as part of the patient’s family.

The project is called “Taking Care: Documenting the Occupational Culture of Home Care Workers.”

―By Greg Bolt, UO Public Affairs Communications