Hello to all! I'm new to Mudcat so forgive me if what I'm about to ask sounds foolish. I have been working on compiling a list of lyrics and song origins for tunes played by renaissance festival musicians, bands, choirs, etc. I've found Mudcat a great resource for such information but I'm a man who would much rather do my own research than ask someone else to do it for me.
With that said, are there any specific resources online or in book form for beginning such research? Frankly that's my problem. I'm not entirely sure where to look or what websites or books would give me the best starting point.
Surely searching Google and looking in the historical and music sections in my library would be a start but I'm afraid the library nearby is rather small and Google can often be of little help with some songs. I'm fearing this could require searching out specific titles in larger university libraries and hoping I can find it without traveling too far.
Guess that all depends on how committed I am in completing my research, now doesn't it?
Anyways, any help would be greatly appreciated. I really don't fully trust wikipedia and while I know you all are very knowledgable I certainly don't want to be taking your research conclusions and using them in my project if I can simply do the research myself. It eliminates any possible risk of being accused of plagarism; a serious offense in my eyes.