Online NOTES AND QUERIES - searchable

Subject: Online NOTES AND QUERIES - searchable
From: GUEST, Sminky
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 05:52 AM

That excellent Victorian chatroom, Notes and Queries has been available to browse online for several years now. However, and whether this a recently-added feature or I am just plain thick, I have just discovered that it is possible to search the volumes.

This is an absolute goldmine of information for anyone interested in folksongs, ballads, dance, folklore, customs etc.

The Annual Register, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and Gentleman's Magazine are also worth a look.

Subject: RE: Online NOTES AND QUERIES - searchable
From: TheSnail
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 06:18 AM

Excellent resource, Sminky. The website is confusingly organised but a good page to start from is Internet Library of Early Journals

Subject: RE: Online NOTES AND QUERIES - searchable
From: GUEST, Sminky
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 06:46 AM

Ah, the elusive home page! I thought those clever Oxford people would have thought to include a link to it from the others pages. Thanks Snail.

Subject: RE: Online NOTES AND QUERIES - searchable
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 01:38 PM

Is it available to all and sundry? last time I looked up N&Q you could only access it through a university. Does it go right back to c1850?

Subject: RE: Online NOTES AND QUERIES - searchable
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 02:20 PM

N&Q opened up. Clicked through to a query about an old ballad. Thanks for the link- a lot of interesting material seems to be there.

Subject: RE: Online NOTES AND QUERIES - searchable
From: ClaireBear
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 02:22 PM

Iust went to page 1 of the first issue (3 November 1849) with no trouble, and I work at a non-academic commercial business. So Steve, I'd say the answer to both qustions is Yes!

Claire

Subject: RE: Online NOTES AND QUERIES - searchable
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 02:30 PM

I took a look, but I got lost pretty quickly. It's going to take a while for me to get used to the site.
A couple of images I tried to review, didn't display. Could it be that they're blocked in the US?
I think it would be nice to use this thread to point to treasures people have found in this resource.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Online NOTES AND QUERIES - searchable
From: ClaireBear
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 02:40 PM

Joe, I didn't have any trouble with the two pages I checked at random. I was using "browse" rather than "search." I'm in San Jose and have T-1 connections, which could be why I'm having no trouble I suppose.

C

Subject: RE: Online NOTES AND QUERIES - searchable
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 19 Sep 08 - 03:06 PM

It seems that the digitized, searchable, online-viewable portion only goes up to 1869 so far. It is being digitized by Project Gutenberg.

According to Wikipedia, "Notes and Queries" is still being published, although the style has changed since the Victorian era.

You can volunteer as a proofreader at Distributed Proofreaders, the proofreading arm of Project Gutenberg, and choose from hundreds of projects (books) to work on. The work is divided up into one-page segments, so you needn't worry about over-committing yourself. You can stop whenever you get bored, or switch to a different project.

At the proofreading level, the work mainly consists of finding and correcting "scannos"—analogous to "typos," it means errors introduced by imperfect automatic scanning and digitizing. Then there's the formatting level, which consists of inserting formatting markup that is very similar to HTML.

Every page has to be read by 6 people—3 proofreaders and 3 formatters—before it is considered finished. Then all the pages have to be assembled into one document before it is made available to the public.

However, it seems that no volumes of "Notes and Queries" are currently active at the Distributed Proofreaders site.

I recently worked on the Child ballads myself.

Subject: RE: Online NOTES AND QUERIES - searchable
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 20 Sep 08 - 04:13 AM

Thanks for that.
About 20 years ago I went into our local Uni library where they have almost a full set, and copied as much of the relevant ballad material as I could. Unfortuately it was something of a rush and I know I missed some entries as, like this forum, many of the entries were part of a thread. However I have a reasonably comprehensive set so if anyone has a particular query the chances are I can find it quickly as I have the NQ indexes and all the copied entries I have are incorporated into my own ballad indexes.