The 'origins' threads can locate (not always) original sheet music or a book with information- mostly using what can be found on the net, or find folk variants that have been handed down- nearly all UK-Irish or North American- little else. Several people here are very knowledgeable on UK-Irish-North American songs.

A few of us have a book or two that are hard to find or have become expensive, but interests are narrow- In my collection of songbooks, I have a couple of rare songbooks with calypso songs, and a lawyer son gave me Nizer's book on his court cases (Rum & Coca-Cola), but I have no personal contact with Caribbean culture. I have a few recordings, but my ear is poor for dialect.

Personaly, I have searched for the origin of some American songs- "My Pretty Quadroon" cost me $40 in donation and fees from a library with perhaps the only copy not lost in the Chicago fire, and another poem, from an archive with old pioneer newspapers, cost me a donation. I cannot afford to do that often.

A few people posting here have intimate access to large UK or U.S. libraries, but most of us would have to pay to access them.