Tables of Contents are welcome!

Subject: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From: MystMoonstruck
Date: 03 Sep 07 - 05:52 PM

I hope this isn't a repeat of another thread. I've looked through as many as I could and did not find what I desperately need. It's wonderful if you have a book in your hands and can look through the TOC to see what songs you do/do not have, but I have found that it's nearly impossible to find contents of songbooks. Instead of taking the risk, I don't order them or bid on ebay. Is it feasible to use this thread to list one TOC at a time? Some may take a bit of typing, but I myself would be happy to do so if it would help guide someone to a book that might get overlooked. If necessary, I would scan TOCs and place them in Photobucket, placing the link in a new post.

I spent most of Sunday searching for TOCS for various books, with no success. Following are several that I would buy IF I knew what songs are included:
The Bonnie Bunch of Roses by Dan Milner (1984)
Folksongs of Britain and Ireland by Peter Kennedy
The Roche Collection of Traditional Irish Music (1983)
Songs of the Sea, Rivers, Lakes and Canals by Jerry Silverman

It's fine to be told that they include many songs. However, if they repeat what I already have in my collection, which started in the Sixties, it's money wasted, true? Is this a worthwhile thread?

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From: Susan of DT
Date: 03 Sep 07 - 06:09 PM

I may have all of them, but definitely the first two. What would you like to know? The Kennedy book has too many songs in it to make even scanning the table of contents fun. I may scan the TOC of Dan's (Liam's Brother on mudcat) book later if someone else doesn't beat me to it. Maybe Dan has the TOC of his book handy. Be sure Dan's book is in good condition - there was a glue problem on one edition. Kennedy's may have had both hard and soft cover editions. The others are soft cover.

I'll go upstairs and see whether the last two are the ones I am thinking of. If so, the Roche book is tunes without words and the Silverman is a Mel Bay book.

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From: Sorcha
Date: 03 Sep 07 - 06:13 PM

I can scan and link to the TOC of the Fiddler's Fake Book/Brody but I am NOT typing all that in here.

I also have several others that I could scan/link, but it's a LOT of typing.

My scan capabilities won't allow copy all and paste. I've tried.

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From: Susan of DT
Date: 03 Sep 07 - 06:27 PM

Yes, the Roche book is all tunes and the Silverman is a Mel Bay book.

Sorcha - Do you have OCR (optical character recognition)? If you turn the scan into text instead of a picture of words, it should paste.

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From: Sorcha
Date: 03 Sep 07 - 07:00 PM

I don't think I do Susan, but I'll look for it.
Still reeling from the Col K news.

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From: GUEST,Joe Offer - at the women's center
Date: 03 Sep 07 - 08:40 PM

Hi, Myst - check our Songbook Indexing threads for what we've done so far. Unfortunately, I don't think we've indexed any of the books on your list.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From: curmudgeon
Date: 03 Sep 07 - 08:52 PM

Hey Myst -- You're here asking people to devote many hours of their time to save you the trouble of going on line, or to your local library to find what you're looking for.

And if you only care about having one version of any song, you're not worth the bother -- Tom

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From: MystMoonstruck
Date: 03 Sep 07 - 09:00 PM

I feared that the larger books would be formidable for such a project. I thought that I would do the scan, place in Photobucket and place link with books I have. It's very frustrating not to know whether I'm passing up a wonderful book or not. I'm on Disability, so funds are limited. I was shopping on ebay and other places and noticed this lack of information. I thought that, if some TOCs were pooled here, it would be a help to others. I don't want to cause a lot of work for participants, but unless I can get to reenactment events, my music source has dried up till I'm strong enough to get back into garb. I fear I'm passing up books that would provide many hours of enjoyment as I learn new melodies.

I play the bowed psaltery, so melodies are a plus though I love knowing the words. I haven't been brave enough to sing except with others, but people often ask me to do so. I also enjoy relating information about the songs I play.

I have noticed that Amazon (I believe it is) does have a link to images of the TOC for a few of the books, which saved me from ordering repetitive material.

I've been collecting folk/traditional music since the Sixties but was familiar with many songs prior to that particular renaissance thanks to my family. During a recent year-long flareup of several illnesses, I was unable to play my psaltery and would like to get back to practicing now that I'm having better days. At one point, I had more than 500 songs in my repertoire. Most of the time, I play "by ear", but there are many songs unavailable on recordings. Thus, I would love to extend my library of songbooks.

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From: MystMoonstruck
Date: 03 Sep 07 - 09:10 PM

I hate to doublepost but I wanted to say that I thought this would be a sharing project for everyone. I'm sorry if I've offended or insinuated that I wanted to spare myself research. Before I was disabled, I traveled to many events and libraries and contacted lots of people in our region. But, I can no longer do this.

Also, I do collect multiple versions of songs. But, some books do duplicate to an extreme degree, just as a lot of CDs do--note for note. I simply want to branch out even more than I already have. I have notebooksful of cross-compared versions. When I play, I generally incorporate the varying versions.

I regret that I was misjudged, but I can understand someone misunderstanding.

Besides, it would be interesting for those who specifically want to view various versions. So, perhaps I should say that no one needs to contribute here, but I will add that I would like to do so, if I could, as I discover more listings.

I really hope I didn't offend or upset anyone. I apologize if I did. I'm a newcomer to the Net, and I've tried to explore a lot of sites in this vast, scary territory. I imagine I'll make a lot of mistakes.

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From: Cluin
Date: 04 Sep 07 - 01:51 AM

I have a copy of "The Bonny Bunch of Roses". There is much more in it than just the songs. I highly recommend it. (Even if you already have all the songs in it, which I doubt).

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Sep 07 - 02:33 AM

Hi, Myst - your idea of a sharing project is excellent, in my very humble opinion - which is why we've been doing exactly that for several years now. I posted the index for Bonny Bunch of Roses in the Oak Publications thread.

We can't possibly post all the lyrics from every songbook - but if we post the indexes, people can find the songs and ask us to post them.

Many of the larger folk songbooks have already been indexed, although sometimes you have to be creative if you want to extract a book's table of contents from an index (and sometimes you can't do it). This query at the Roud Folksong Index will extract a table of contents for Peter Kennedy's Folksongs of England, Scotland, and Wales.

My favorite songbook index is The Traditional Ballad Index, but I think it would be difficult to extract a table of contents for any one book from it.


I think curmudgeon must be in a bad mood today or something - what you're asking for, is exactly what Mudcat was established for.

-Joe Offer, Forum Moderator-

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From: MystMoonstruck
Date: 04 Sep 07 - 03:51 AM

Thank you for the information. I have spent most of two days searching for the contents of several books but have failed, no matter how many sources I check. That's why I would like to place listings here, and I'm willing to do this with as many books as I can find, including those in my collection. I've seen song listings, but that isn't what I wanted to do here. I thought it would be nice if other seekers could find their way to Mudcat in order to have questions answered. If they did a search for a song, perhaps it will bring them to this remarkable site.

Certainly, lyrics would be an impossibility, especially with all of the variations, but a compilation of songbook contents could help everyone. I will be checking all of the links you have provided; I love research, so each link will be intriguing. I haven't been on the Net very long, so I simply might not have looked in the right places. I do understand that it's how a search is entered, but I've tried so many variations without much success.

You have the "Bonnie Bunch of Roses" TOC?! I definitely need to check out that one! Perhaps I'll find material that will spark my will to play my bowed psaltery again since the flareup of my illnesses seems to be winding down. Knock on wood!!!

If doubleposting is OK, I'll type in TOCs from some of the books I have. I'm finding that some of the least likely looking books sometimes hold wonderful surprises; I'll bet many are overlooked because they might look like run-of-the-mill collections. I don't want anyone to think that I look down my nose at any song. I love the variations and learn as many as I can. My favorite is an ancient-sounding, solemn version of "The Mermaid"; while the lyrics are similar, the melodies are a world apart. Someday, I'll be able to go to Ireland; none of my family ever got to go back, but I dream of it.

By the way, I've set this site on my Favorites list.

Thank you for your advice. I truly appreciate it. I hope people will be forgiving if I make errors; I'm still learning about the Internet and forums.

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From:
Date: 04 Sep 07 - 08:48 AM

Welcome to Mudcat Myst. I was disappointed to see Curmudgeon's post. We have been doing that for a few years now.

I've been doing a similar one for all of the Gaelic songbooks and should get started on the Helen Creighton books I have. But ever since Hurricane Juan, and finding a new job, it's been hard to get the enthusiasm up, but this is a good kick in the pants to update the Gaelic Songbook index and get started with the rest of the Helen Creighton song book index I've been thinking about.

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From: jacqui.c
Date: 04 Sep 07 - 10:56 AM

Welcome to the Mudcat Myst. I hope you have as good a time here as I have had in the past few years.

I reckon the TOC is a great idea and all credit to you for offering to do what work you can. I know what you mean about the same song, down the the last note - seen it myself and, when you're on a budget, it is a waste of money to get exactly the same material again.

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 04 Sep 07 - 01:55 PM

Here's another approach you might take: Find the book in a library, and look at the actual book before you decide whether you want to buy it. If it turns out that it only has a few songs that you want, you can photocopy the pages. I think you can legally do this as long as the copies are for personal use.

WorldCat is very useful for finding books in a library.

In fact, WorldCat has a provision for storing and displaying the table of contents for any book, but the information is usually missing. They seem to be relying on the public to supply the information.

If you find the catalog entry (description) of the book you want, and click "Details" you will see a heading "Table of Contents" but it is usually followed by the message "Be the first person to add table of contents for this item."

I once entered the table of contents for a book, as an experiment, and it worked, but I don't remember which book it was! I don't have a scanner or OCR, so I don't plan to do a lot of this.

I suppose it would be a public service, for anyone who does have a scanner and an OCR program, to post the data both at WorldCat and here (if it's a song book).

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Sep 07 - 02:02 PM

Hi, Myst -
I'm not sure you actually understand what it is that we have here already, and how it's organized. Up above I gave you links to Bonny Bunch of Roses in the Oak Publications thread; and to this query at the Roud Folksong Index which will extract a table of contents for Peter Kennedy's Folksongs of England, Scotland, and Wales - and there is no indication in your subsequent post that you had followed either link and looked at what we have available (our posts are fairly close together, so maybe you started typing yours before I finished posting mine). It's a wonderful thing to post good, documented information at Mudcat, but it's important to first make yourself familiar with what we already have. If you post lyrics or a table of contents, try to do it in an existing thread on the same subject. It's probably worthwhile to start a new thread for the Jerry Silverman book - Silverman is a prolific songbook editor, and I've been meaning to index the Silverman books I have. The Roche collection would probably fit best in our Index of Songbooks in Print thread, which has indexes for a variety of songbooks.



You say "I've seen song listings, but that isn't what I wanted to do here" - but then I wonder what it is that you would like to do here, since most of our song listings linked above, are the tables of contents of songbooks. You ask about doubleposting and whether it's allowed here, and I'm not sure what you mean by the term. We "allow" most things here, but we discourage the posting of something somebody has already posted here before. That kind of double posting just confuses people.

So, anyhow, I just wanted to make sure you understand what we already have, and how we're trying to organize things. Then you're welcome to add what you have and contribute to the body of knowledge we're building here.

All the best to you.

-Joe Offer, Forum Moderator-

---

In general, there are two purposes for our Songbook Indexing project:

1. We can find our way through our own songbook collections
2. Other peoplc can see what we have available to post, and they can ask us for those songs

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From: nutty
Date: 04 Sep 07 - 05:52 PM

If you haven't yet discovered this site then it is a must for anyone searching for Folk Song Books and lyrics and music. Not everything is free but if it is something you are searching for then it may be worth paying for the info - although I had not yet had to pay for any info I required....

A Traditional Music Library

It is an amazing resource -

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From: MystMoonstruck
Date: 04 Sep 07 - 06:34 PM

I can't believe that I just zapped my post! *SIGH*

I wanted to let you know that I thought the chart on Oak Publications was the end of that section. I didn't scroll down far enough to find what you were directing me to. I definitely am a newbie to the Net and sometimes make embarrassing errors.

I see that my notion of TOCs in one thread could become cluttered. A thread for each author makes sense.

I have a problem that holds me back is my extremely poor vision, which makes the forum links very difficult to read. I'm starting to understand how things are set up here, but I admit to having trouble reading the very tiny type that links appear in. Again, I'm sorry if I messed up by starting this thread, but I still can use it to record TOCs of books that I have purchased at reenactment events. They aren't professionally published works but might be available through mail order or at events.

About my remark about song listings: I know titles and various versions of titles for songs. What I like to see are those tantalizingly unfamiliar titles, ones I've not encountered in other books or in my ever-growing collection of LPs, cassettes and CDs. I was hoping the spark of "new old" songs would help me get through the yearlong flareup of my illnesses. I'll be so happy when I can hold psaltery and bow again without fear of dropping them. Sure, the bow has handled a few spills, but the psaltery... I dropped it once, and that was scary enough. But, I might have need of the song listings sometime; I'm happy to know that I have a place to look for them.

With each visit, I'll learn more about this site that I hope to revisit as often as possible.

Our library is hopeless. Once, they had several dozen songbooks. Now, there are very few because they pull them from the shelves for their annual sale! They used to have Kine's book of Shakespearean songs; when I phoned to see if it was available, I was told it had been pulled off the shelf, as was a Sandburg book and several others. Back then, I didn't have access to a copier, or I would have made copies of some of the songs for my notebooks. I tried handcopying, which sometimes works except with more intricate melodies; my handwork is never clear enough, no matter how careful I try to be. Also, our library is not very handicap-friendly; I can't even get to their sale because it's in the basement. I've offered to buy books they plan to pull, to pay a good price, more than they would get at the sale, but they refuse for some unknown reason though they did sell me editions of "Screen World" when I asked. So, the local library is no source. Several years ago, I visited libraries 30 and 45 miles away (something I no longer can do); even these larger cities had few books of traditional music, instead offering Broadway and pop music books.

I see that Amazon.com and other places request public input. If I do order books, I do intend to leave a review and perhaps a listing or partial listing of the contents.

Thanks to everyone for responding and giving me guidance, information, support and reprimands. If I don't reply directly to it, please forgive me. I've been trying to read all of the posts to make sure that I haven't missed something, but I'm sure I will.

Forgive me if I seem a bit addled at times. I'm still adjusting to the environment of sites and forums and am feeling rather overwhelmed by all of this. I haven't had a computer or the Net for very long, so I'll sound rather clueless at times. Please bear with me. The Net is rather scary territory--for me at least.

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From: MystMoonstruck
Date: 04 Sep 07 - 06:41 PM

Nutty: Thank you for that link! I shall save that in Favorites, too! You must have posted while I was writing my other post.

That does look like a wonderful source of information. I appreciate it so much. Eventually, I'll explore all this site holds, but it's great to learn about other sources of informstion.

Thanks!

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From:
Date: 05 Sep 07 - 09:12 AM

Myst, you may not have seen one of the threads on them but there are a number of web-sites, through libraries such as the Library of Congress, that offers the ability to view/download sheet music which is in the public domain. I don't recall if we ever set up a thread for those links but they are scattered through the Mudcat. Also Masuto gave us a wonderful resource nearly a year ago. The Library of Congress has an archive which you can search through. In that archive search are links to DOWNLOADABLE books. The COMPLETE books found in a library somewhere. Not everything is available, but many items such as the Child Ballads books and many hard to find resources are available. And as PDFs, you can view them at up to 500% magnification. Most don't have music in them, but as resources for lyrics are phenomenal. They also have videos and recordings of live performances and a lot of other material as well.

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From:
Date: 05 Sep 07 - 09:16 AM

Myst, here is one of thread which was started with a few of the Sheet Music repositories available

Sheet Music Repositories

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From: Joe Offer
Date: 05 Sep 07 - 08:40 PM

Hi, Myst -
If you go to the "View" menu on your browser, you may be able to select a larger typeface for viewing the Internet. I've used it, and I've found it very helpful.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From: MystMoonstruck
Date: 05 Sep 07 - 10:08 PM

OMG! The View does help! Thank you so much! If I can do this everywhere, it will expand the places I can visit, many of which have difficult-to-read fonts or ones that are too small. You see that I really don't know much about PCs and the Internet. I've learned some things by experimenting, but I certainly would not have considered trying to enlarge print, which is wonderful! Yippee! Thanks again!

Thanks to everyone for providing me links to places. I've already added these sites to Favorites--which someone explained to me early in my Net travels. If she hadn't, I'd be hopelessly lost. When I started, I knew next to nothing. So, I appreciate any and all advice.

I'm amazed by the resources available and will be trying these links. Hmmm... Perhaps I should start some sort of notebook since I'm more accustomed to dealing with hard copy. I already experienced my laptop refusing to open a disk that held lots of penpalling info. *SOB* Now, I find it hard to trust disks, so someone suggested a zip disk, which I have but haven't had the courage to try to use. I know: I'm such a coward. I do appreciate every bit of help I'm receiving and hope to be a worthwhile member here, even if I oopsed a couple of times: no alert for a new song and starting this particular thread, which I still could put to good use with books I've purchased at reenactment events.

Subject: RE: TABLES of CONTENT are welcome!
From:
Date: 09 Mar 08 - 08:26 PM

I don't remember if anyone has linked James Prescott's Folksong Index