"Yes, all sorts of people have volunteered to tell Dick how to run the Digital Tradition"
I really hope yer not lumping people who are offering to HELP in with that lot, Joe...

Well, the place to help is right here. That's why Mudcat was set up. It's not a question of volunteering to help - find something that needs work, do the work on it, and post what you come up with. Dick has to have a small crew to do the tech stuff and the final editing, or things can get out of hand - but everybody can help by posting well-researched stuff here at Mudcat.

Mudcat is a wide-open opportunity for people to submit information - and it's immediately available because Mudcat is searchable. If the Digitrad lyrics of a song are out of kilter or if a tune is missing, post a message in a related thread and provide the information - preferably, using the Digitrad format and categories explained in the FAQ.

For a near-perfect example of what people can do, take a look at the Penguin Book of English Folksongs (click) thread. Ed Pellow transcribed all the tunes from the book, and then Alan Foster posted all the lyrics that were not in the Digital Tradition. Malcolm Douglas and others added research information and reference links for each song, and I added an index.

If you're posting a single song, please try to put it into a previous thread on a song, or into a thread that's related to a song. If you start a thread to post a single song, the thread gets lost unless there's reason for further discussion. A number of the "spirituals" project songs got lost for that reason. If you are posting a number of songs, it's far better to group them into threads with related songs, or to index them in one thread (as was done with the Penguin songs).

Another idea would be to do a systematic review of songs in the Digital Tradition, adding background information, alternate versions of lyrics, and corrected lyrics.

When you post lyrics, be sure to cite your sources. I know some people are irritated with the Campsite at Drumcree threads, but there are some interesting songs being posted there. I only wish the posters would identify themselves and (most importantly) cite their sources.

Yeah, it was nice when the Digital Tradition was updated twice a year, but that task has become more difficult with the death of DOS and the huge size of the database. You can't just dump a lot of songs into the database - they need to be cross-indexed and compared with what we already have. If you provide the cross-index and comparison information when you post the lyrics, that's a big help.

One more thing: when you post lyrics, please be sure that the word ADD and the song title are in your message title - just type the information into the box that says "Subject" in the reply to thread box. If it's a correction to lyrics we already have, put CORRECTION in the message title.
And please, cite your sources and give the songwriter name and publication date if it's a published song.
Thanks.

-Joe Offer-