The Alan Lomax Collection from the American Folklife Center, compiled by Don Fleming, Executive Director of the Alan Lomax Archive, highlights 16 songs from Lomax's U.S and international field-recording collections.

Alan Lomax spent his life in transit, documenting folk music from across the United States, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, North Africa, the Soviet Union, and the Eastern Caribbean. Featured here are sixteen selections, including four previously unreleased songs and one previously unreleased version, from his collections at the Library of Congress' American Folklife Center, recorded between 1947-1982. Introduced by a paean to America's greatest folk hero, John Henry, and concluding with one of the country's most enduring lullabies, the compilation combines ballads, blues, dance tunes, and sacred songs from around the U.S. with a Gaelic ode, Galician alborada (dawn song), Genoan chorale, Grenadan shango ritual, Trinidadian calypso, and the ashug bardic music of Azerbaijan. Here is a view of the Lomax collection in all of its breadth, joy, and dignity.

In 2004, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress acquired the original recordings and photographs, media collections, library, manuscripts, and research materials that had been assembled by Alan Lomax over the course of six decades, uniting them with the recordings made by Alan and his father, John A. Lomax, for the Library of Congress from 1933 to 1942.In 2004, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress acquired the original recordings and photographs, media collections, library, manuscripts, and research materials that had been assembled by Alan Lomax over the course of six decades, uniting them with the recordings made by Alan and his father, John A. Lomax, for the Library of Congress from 1933 to 1942.

The Alan Lomax Collection from the American Folklife Center was released on January 31, 2012, which would have been Alan Lomax's 97th birthday.