Nigel, from my work so far on the Spirituals, I can tell you that doing some thread-searching is probably in order. I used a variety of words I knew would have been used in the titles and lyrics of spirituals, as well as words used to refer to them. More than one person searched, so that different minds could come up with different words others had not come up with. (One person at a time in turn so we did not duplicate effort.)

I also did searches (by username) on the posts of memebers who I knew had some interest or expertise in the subject, and doing that netted a bunch MORE stuff, all relevant.

This netted me a huge number of threads that later came to be indexed, and we try to keep that up to date as new threads are found or created that fit the project. The index makes it possible now to put new information, variants, and related songs, as we come across them, in the oler threads.

I found it essential to mark the older threads as having been indexed, as I got to a grasp on how hard it would be to remember what had or had not been done-- but that refreshed each one and it would have been far better if I had drafted the right copy and let someone with an edit button insert that in the older threads. So right now, only some of them indicate that they are indexed.

The DTStudy threads are bit different and I am people will work up your own processes as each person gets interested in doing these-- feel free to use any of my experience or not, as is best.

Good luck! It's fun stuff!

~Susan