usefulness of songbook indexing?

Subject: usefulness of songbook indexing?
From: Planetluvver
Date: 12 Jun 21 - 02:50 AM

I have at least one songbook that does not appear to be indexed on the website. How useful are these indexes to people in general?

The one book I did not see indexed is Maritime Folk Songs by Helen Creighton. ISBN:0-919948-85-5

A second book that I have not looked for at Mudcat is "The Ballad Repertoire of Anna Gordon, Mrs. Brown of Falkland. ISBN: 978-1-89797-632-6

This likely should be asked separately, but is it likely all the songs from these collections are already in the song database? Is there any systematic effort to put songs from collections into the data base? Is it "legal?" Is it even necessary or desired? (I am sure other song collections exist online.)

Subject: RE: usefulness of songbook indexing?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jun 21 - 09:04 AM

All of Anna Gordon's ballads are in Child and so accessible to a casual user. What Rieuwerts gives in the book are all the separate versions from the different manuscripts for comparison which you don't get in Child. These indexes are still useful. I'm surprised MFS isn't already indexed here. If you have the time I'm sure posters would find it useful.

Subject: RE: usefulness of songbook indexing?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Jun 21 - 10:02 AM

The best you'll find online, it looks like, is that World Cat lists the book contents.

Subject: RE: usefulness of songbook indexing?
From: Reinhard
Date: 12 Jun 21 - 10:44 AM

You could get an unsorted list of Maritime Folk Songs from the VWML site with the link
https://www.vwml.org/search?advq=0|sr|Maritime%20Folk%20Songs&subview=list&collectionfilter=RoudFS;RoudBS&is=1

Subject: RE: usefulness of songbook indexing?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jun 21 - 12:35 PM

If the forum allowed for cut and paste we could do the lot in a trice, contents and index.

Subject: RE: usefulness of songbook indexing?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 12 Jun 21 - 12:54 PM

Hi, Steve -
We do a lot of cut and paste in the Mudcat Forum, so I think I'm not understanding what you're suggesting. I can help with most things, and I've been able to develop workarounds for a lot of things we're not set up to do.

The Traditional Ballad Index indexes Creighton's Maritime Folk Songs - but their index is organized by song title, not by the name of the publication.

We have a lot of songbooks indexed here at Mudcat, but we tend to stay away from books that have already been indexed by other sources.

I once made frequent use of the UTK Song Index at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, but I can't find it anymore. In recent years, I've found almost all I need in Roud and the Traditional Ballad Index.

-Joe Offer, Mudcat Music Editor-

Subject: RE: usefulness of songbook indexing?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Jun 21 - 01:00 PM

An "index" is a more detailed alphabetized list of terms with page numbers taking you to the particular song(s) in which they occur. Ideally they are generated by the publisher or editor of a volume and added at the back. Should one be compiled, it would be handy if saved in a PDF with links to the pages if the book is published anywhere. Contents are different, and list of first lines is different, though all three are useful in this kind of book.

Subject: RE: usefulness of songbook indexing?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Jun 21 - 02:13 PM

Hi Joe
Sorry, wasn't aware that is possible. Anything I've contributed I've just typed out when I had time.

I agree, for people like you and me familiar with the Roud Indexes, and indeed have our own indexes, that's no problem, but some here obviously like to have the contents listed or an index.

I also find Reinhard's 'Mainly Norfolk' site very useful.

Subject: RE: usefulness of songbook indexing?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 12 Jun 21 - 07:07 PM

In our songbook indexes here at Mudcat, we often don't include page numbers. My OCR doesn't copy the page numbers when I OCR the table of contents in most books, so I don't bother. As long as we know what book a song is in (and who owns the book), we can go to the book and look at the table of contents for the page number. Unfortunately, Frank Staplin ("Q") and Masato Sakurai contributed many of our indexes, and they are no longer with us.

We found that our songbooks contain a lot of songs nobody is interested in, so there was no need to post those songs at Mudcat - but they can be found in an index search, and then we're happy to post the songs (even pop songs about astronauts!!).

I have information-sharing agreements with Reinhard and with David Engle of the Traditional Ballad Index, so you will sometimes see us posting lengthy passages from those two sources.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: usefulness of songbook indexing?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Jun 21 - 07:21 PM

Not to be pedantic here, but the index would point to keywords within songs throughout the book, it's more granular than a simple list of contents.

Subject: RE: usefulness of songbook indexing?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 Jun 21 - 03:50 AM

You're not being pedantic. The Roud Indexers are working on that very idea at the moment, essential when searching for an obscure song as titles and first lines can vary as much as the songs themselves. Of course Google can be helpful but there's also a mountain of other stuff to sift through.

Subject: RE: usefulness of songbook indexing?
From: Planetluvver
Date: 21 Jun 21 - 11:58 PM

I hadn't checked on this thread in a while and it seems more have posted since I last looked. From what I gather, it is relatively easy to find what is in any particular book, except perhaps the very obscure books. However, knowing who might own a book might be useful.

FWIW, I often use worldcat.org to find the contents of a song book. It has limited usefulness to search for a song title to find a book that might contain it. Although refining my search techniques might improve my results.

Subject: RE: usefulness of songbook indexing?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 22 Jun 21 - 12:11 AM

One of the fastest ways to compile an index would be to get a high resolution scan of the text, run the image through a good quality optical character resolution program (OCR) and from there search the text for terms and create an index. The slowest part of that fastest way is the OCR part, in which an individual might have to key in text where the program doesn't recognize it if the font is an old one or the paper has foxing and such that offer random unrecognized marks. (I've done this work - it can be slow.)

The other way would be to have someone read the book and take notes regarding keywords and pages. The resulting PDF from the first method would give you access to any word anywhere in the book, the second would be the index alone.