The Indiana University Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology records include administrative files, subject files, correspondence, files and audio recordings of the Special Projects unit, grant and budget information, and conference files produced by the department from 1942 through 2010. The collection is organized into three series: Folklore Institute, Ethnomusicology Institute, and Special Projects.

The Folklore Institute series is further organized into three subseries: Administrative files (1942-2007), General subject files (1965-2002), and Individual subject files (1965-2007). Administrative files contains materials pertaining to the day-to-day activities of the Folklore Institute including faculty meeting minutes, curriculum information, newsletters, teaching resources, departmental reviews, publicity materials, and histories of the department. Both subject files subseries contain correspondence, clippings, promotional materials, and other documents. Files in the General subject files subseries pertain primarily to folklore societies, publishers, and other organizations, while Individual subject files mainly contain material related to IU faculty, staff, students, visiting professors and speakers, and other members of the folklore field. Each subseries is organized alphabetically.

The Ethnomusicology Institute series (1973-2008), contains materials relating to Archives of Traditional Music grants, ethnomusicology faculty meetings, publications, brochures, correspondence, courses, student information, and faculty service. The series is organized alphabetically by folder heading.

The Special Projects (1944-2010) series contains materials from the Special Projects unit of the IU Folklore Department. The Special Projects unit of the Folklore Department was created in 1979 with the goal of obtaining external funding for publications, conferences, videos, research, and outreach activities. The Special Projects series has four subseries: General Project Files, Grant Proposals and Budget Information, Conferences and Colloquia, and Public Initiatives.

The General Project Files (1944-2010) subseries is arranged alphabetically and contains miscellaneous Special Project unit records including files related to the Folklore Archives Motif Index Computer Project, the Richard M. Dorson Award for Outstanding Papers in Folklore, the annual Ghost Walk, and Traditional Arts Indiana (TAI).

The Grants and Budget Information (1975-2005) subseries houses records of the Special Projects Unit's funded and unfunded project proposals to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian, and the Indiana Humanities Council. The subseries includes correspondence, budget breakdowns, departmental memos, instructions for the application process, and copies of the official proposals. Project proposals included in this subseries relate to research grants, community programming, assisting folklore repositories on campus, and funding folklore publications at IU.

The Conferences and Colloquia (1979-2017) subseries is arranged chronologically to replicate the conference-planning process and grouped together within the series. Many materials in this subseries relate to the conferences "The Kalevala, The Comparative Method and Beyond: A Symposium of American and Finnish Folklore," held in the Indiana University Memorial Union from September 25-28, 1985, and "Cultural Basics: Educating with the Grain," a cross-disciplinary conference in folklore and history-making in the classroom that took place on June 19-20, 1992.

The Public Initiatives (1967-2007) subseries contains records related to a joint residency program between Indiana University and the American Folklore Society, the annual folklore summer field school, the Tales On-Line (TOL) project, service-learning folklore courses, the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, oral history interviews on audiocassettes and U-matics, and teaching materials for local elementary schools. The subseries is organized alphabetically.