There seems to be a good bit of confusion, and a great deal of misinformation, about the Digital Tradition. Maybe this will help clarify matters.

DigiTrad was and is intended to be a songbook. While I insert as much background material as I can, it can never meet the standards of a scholarly study-nor should it. It contains errors and misattributions-a necessary consequence of soliciting and including contributions from anyone; these are corrected-sooner or later-as time permits and newer editions emerge.

Quite early on, I decided that the only acceptable structure for this sort of collection is a full-text searchable database. Titles are virtually useless for identifying what you're looking for , as many songs share the same title (I can think of half-a-dozen or so called "Lady Margaret") and many songs are referred to by more than one title. A decent full-text search, expecially one that permits the use of "wild cards" as well as Boolean operators such as "NOT", "OR" and "AND", and one that can search out complete phrases as well as individual words is, IMO, the only way to go. Linking the lyric with a playable and printable melody is another extremely important feature. And displaying the words in a display synchronous with the tune is, I believe, another basic requirement. We were able to accomplish all of these with two programs-AskSam and SongWright.

A decade or so ago, we had all this. Then some unforeseen things happened. Firstly, we found that the number of hits we were encountering on Mudcat made it imperative to reduce processing time (for a search) to a minimum; while storage space didn't seem to be a problem, searching time was. As a consequence, the version of DigiTrad accessible online is in several ways a pale shadow of the DigiTrad you could get on disc. The full-text search was weakened drastically, and the playing of the tunes was in MIDI format, and could not be synchronized with the lyrics.

At about the same time, a couple of things happened to the disc-based system: The DOS operating system became demonized and, to a great extent, made obsolete by the advent of Windows. An increased demand for a Digital Tradition that would run on a Mac emerged. And the scheme I used for playing tunes-depending upon programming the computer's "beeper"--became non-functional when the newer computers came out without beepers.

A brave volunteer programmer came to our rescue-at least in part-by converting the DOS program to a Mac program, and incidentally, to one that worked on Windows. While using a search engine considerably less powerful than the original, these new versions had the not inconsiderable advantage of displaying a printed score, as well as playing the tune in a MIDI format while changing the color of the notes as they were played.

All was good--not perfect, but good. And then both Microsoft and Apple came out with upgraded operating systems; not just once, but several times. And each time the operating system changed, we had to modify DigiTrad to not only accept these changes, but to remain compatible with all the previous versions.
To make things worse, our volunteer became involved with a major project in the folk world having nothing to do with The Digital Tradition nor Mudcat., and has been unavailable to us for several years.

OK. Where does that leave us? Susan and I have over a thousand songs ready to add to the Digital Tradition. Neither of us has the low-level programming experience to prepare the next release. I don't believe that the programming should be too difficult: The lyrics (presently in AskSam format) can readily be exported as text files; the tunes, (in SongWright format) can fairly readily be converted to MIDI or ABC (there are programs in existence that do this, and I believe we can obtain a license to use them.)

The next edition---really four editions-must come out in HTML format (for Mudcat), Windows format (to handle XP and previous versions) and Mac (to handle whatever's the latest version and back through the various OSs.)

Some last points. Neither Susan nor I are funded in any way for the work we do on DigiTrad. And, in response to a nameless Guest who has stated:

"If there were some way to wrench control of the DT away from Max and Dick"
"It is my understanding (and someone will correct me if I'm wrong, which is fine) that there was a marriage of Max to the DT because of Max's expertise in data mining."
"Many people active in the folk music community in North America, Europe and beyond who either never posted to the forum or no longer post here, happen to recognize that DT and the music archive will only have long term value to the music community if control of it is wrested away from Max & Dick."

I'd like to point out that Max's involvement with the DT consists solely of providing it with a home. As far as "wresting" or "wrenching" control of The Digital Tradition, I can only ask, "What control?" Anyone is free to use DigiTrad as they wish, and several people have.

And I'm still looking for programming help. Call 800/548-FOLK (3655)