Together with other folklorists working in family folklore such as Steve Zeitlin, Karen Baldwin, and Marilyn White, Yocom helped develop this new ethnographic field of study.

Yocom has written and continues to write about the Richard family of loggers and woodcarvers, homemakers and knitters in the western mountains of Maine.

Her interest lies in many facets of Maine culture but especially in wood carving, textile arts, and traditional narratives.

Of her experience in Maine she says: "I like the idea of accompanying people: working for a long time in a field area and getting to know them.

Since 1986 she has been folklorist and curator for the Rangeley Lakes Region Logging Museum founded by Rodney Richard.

In 1983 she accepted a job with Kawerak, the non-profit arm of the Bering Straits Native Corporation in Nome, Alaska, where she was the folklorist of the Eskimo Heritage Program.

One of its members, Frank de Caro, published an anthology of folklorists' creative writing: The Folklore Muse (Utah State University Press, 2008).