Well, Liz, when you post lyrics, those lyrics are collected by the dedicated, talented, good-natured, and fabulously good-looking members of the Digital Tradition Harvesting Crew (Susan of DT and Joe Offer). When they harvest a song, they mark it with a ^^ birdie. If it's a redundant song that's already in the database, they mark it with a birdie with a redundant third wing. ^^^
I hope you've helped the Harvesting Crew out by checking the FAQ for instruction on how to post songs in the Digital Tradition format:

• Search the Digital Tradition and Forum to make sure the song hasn't already been posted
• put <br> line breaks in every single line, including the blank lines between stanzas
• put the song title IN ALL CAPS at the beginning of the song
• put the songwriter name (in parentheses) in the second line
• put any background notes at the end of the lyrics
• at the end include the initials of your real name, so your contribution can be credited
• if you can, submit a tune to Mudcat MIDIs (see Quick Links)
• If there are related songs in the Database or Forum, please let us know

The harvester copies the lyrics into a word processor and corrects any formatting mistakes; and then searches the database for any related songs. The song is reviewed, and an attempt is made to match it to our 200-some keywords (categories), so it will be easier to search for songs of a given type. Then a filename is assigned to the song, and the lyrics are sent on to Dick Greenhaus for inclusion in the database. If there's a tune, Dick tries to match the lyrics to the tune so they'll display all nice and neat. I don't know what other arcane rituals Dick performs in his dungeon workshop before the database goes out, but I know he does a heck of a lot of work on it.

It's quite a bit of work to process a song for inclusion in the database. I'd say it takes about half an hour, plus whatever time Dick spends on it.

-Joe Offer-