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Subject: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: nutty Date: 17 Apr 01 - 05:45 AM I have just spent, what might have been a miserable and cold Easter break, absolutely absorbed in the Ballad and Broadside section of the Bodleian Library in Oxford(UK), which now has it's database on the Internet. Once I had mastered the search engine,I was browsing through broadsheets printed at least 150 - 200years ago. Many are still recognisable as songs we sing today. Others amazingly have survived almost (apart from the odd word ) entirely intact. I can recommend it to anyone interested it tracing origin of songs and ballads |
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: nutty Date: 17 Apr 01 - 05:49 AM I don't know where my mind is these days - before anyone corrects me - the clicky should have said BODLEIAN BROADSIDES . Is that something a Joe Cone can fix? PLEASE |
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 17 Apr 01 - 09:44 AM That's been a click-on the Mudcat Links and on my homepage for well over a year. The head of the group that did it is Mike Heaney, now an Associate Director for Planning at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. As editor of the Folk Music Journal of the EFDSS (also) he requested a review from me on the Bodley Ballads website and Steve Roud's folk song and broadside ballad indexes in March of 2000 (electronic media resources). My review of them is in the issue of Folk Music Journal that came out last Decembr (2000). |
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: nutty Date: 17 Apr 01 - 10:25 AM I would appreciate clickies to your site and the others you've mentioned,Bruce. It's often easier to find the "what" than the "where" on the web. Please pass on my thanks, to the Bodleian, for creating such a great site. |
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: Davie K Date: 17 Apr 01 - 11:16 AM 150-200 years ago? That's not right, surely - the Bodleian is far older and has stuff more like 400-500 years ago! 200 years ago modern songwriters like Stephen Foster were cutting their teeth (literally, I think...) and by 150 years ago the pop music industry was almost detectable. The watershed is 1765 - Percy and Herd. Ignore Allan Ramsay, Pepys, and various 'Garlands' since so much of it was plain awful art-song with poetastic words. But once Percy opened the doors, between than and 1830 you've got a whole bunch of collectors, imposters, inventors etc and that habit has never ceased. What really matters is MS copies and blackletter stuff of a very early date, and 150-200 years ago is modern in folk song terms if you are looking for 'origins'. Thanks for the site pointer - I shall use it! |
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 17 Apr 01 - 11:26 AM Click on Mudcat's Links (in 2nd line on this page) and www.erols.com/olsonw I am more interested in getting other people's problems with the Bodley Ballads Search (keywords) and Browse listed, to pass on to Mike Heaney. It's a 2nd version, but still doesn't work well at all. It turns out that the Bodley Ballads website has several songs called "The Wearing of the Green", but I had a devil of a time at the beginning trying to find out if they had any of that title. [Use Browse on 'wearin', which is not what's in the titles. That was the only thing that would work for me when I tried it.] |
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: MMario Date: 17 Apr 01 - 11:36 AM Bruce - I have found that by searching sumultaneously on the SAME word for both their "1" index and the "2" index using boolean "or" gives me better results. |
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 17 Apr 01 - 11:43 AM Thanks MMario. I never thought of trying that. But it looks like one has to be pretty devious to find what you want there. I don't quite understand why search techniques are so variable. The Levy collection multiple keyword Search works beautifully.
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: MMario Date: 17 Apr 01 - 11:52 AM trade offs. Levy doesn't have nearly as good a track record in their actual links. The number of broken or incorrect links on their site is huge! (I'm not really complaining - it's a big job. - but I've been waiting two years to have some of the links fixed...) |
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 17 Apr 01 - 12:42 PM That I know, and I remember that they used to make a copy for you of something they had for a few dollars if it wasn't on their website. No more; I offered to pay for such about 2 weeks ago, and I'm still waiting for a reply to my email. |
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: Malcolm Douglas Date: 17 Apr 01 - 01:12 PM I've relied on the "browse" feature at the Bodleian for about a year, now, and get better results that way, though it's a slow business trawling through all the alternate titles I can think of. "Search" fails to bring up a lot of things that I know to be there; I assume that it doesn't search the bodies of titles, but then, I still don't really understand "boolean" terms... |
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: nutty Date: 17 Apr 01 - 01:26 PM I was using the browse feature, which allowed me to discover that there were very often distinct differences between songs with the same title and that the same song was often printed under different titles. The other advantage of the "browse" is that if one copy is illegible you can usually find another(different printer)that allows you to read the text. I've just upgraded my moniter and that helps as well. |
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 17 Apr 01 - 01:42 PM Malcolm, don't feel bad. You're not alone. Boolean can be crazy! 2 binary state variables (1st= 0 or 1 and 2nd = 0 or 1) into a Bollean black box can give 16 different outputs. 6 of these are useless for doing anything worthwile, leaving 10 to play with. AND (inverse = NAND), OR (inverse = NOR), (exclusive or =) XOR (inverse = NXOR), then there are the 2 I just call B and C selectors (and their inverses). Some of these possible outcomes have reasonably standard names for the Boolean black box that give that result (AND, OR) but some have more than one (exclusive OR and its inverse), and some don't have any (those B and C selectors). The way Boolean algebra is treated in most textbooks is just crazy. After my complaint that they had missed the 17th century copy of "Death and the Lady", Wood 417(129) (ZN843) they went and found it and put it on.
However, I also complained that "The Young-mans Lamentation" Douce 2(261b) [search title on 'young-man'], the origin of much of "On Top of Old Smokey", is mostly unreadable has brought no results. It's still mostly unreadable. (ZN3614 in my broadside ballad index) There are also a lot of other unreadable sheets.
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 17 Apr 01 - 01:59 PM Significant binary Boolean operators [not given are the 5 inverse operations. For these change 0 to 1 and 1 to 0 on the right side of the | in the proper column [Sorry, I don't know how to make HTML do this right, so copy to a file and use your word processor to space out to proper columns.] inputs| Boolean outputs x y | AND B C OR XOR
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: mousethief Date: 17 Apr 01 - 02:06 PM Nutty, way cool website! Alex |
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: nutty Date: 17 Apr 01 - 03:06 PM Thanks Alex |
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 17 Apr 01 - 03:10 PM mousethief, I didn't learn Boolean algebra at Olympic Junior College, although the best teacher I ever had for anything in college was Dr. Alfred Sekel, my math teacher there. I suspect you've seen the place, but they've replaced those old WWII dorms that we had to use for classrooms in the early days. German class was the worst. The windows fit so poorly that in the winter we frequenctly had to brush the snow off our seats before class. |
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 17 Apr 01 - 03:56 PM Note in the Boolean algebra table above what a neat switch B is. If y = 0 then x doesn't get through, and if y = 1 then whatever x is gets through. In other words with a Boolean black box = B, y switches x on or off.
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: Liam's Brother Date: 17 Apr 01 - 04:07 PM I rather fear the response to this but... why don't they use the English language as the search medium? |
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 17 Apr 01 - 04:14 PM Because that's old stuff that's often spelled differently today. English spelling, however, hasn't changed nearly as much as Gaelic or French in the last 400 years. [I realize my explaination isn't going to help you much in finding anything. It just tells you that sometimes its going to be hard to find it.]
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: nutty Date: 17 Apr 01 - 05:06 PM I don't understand what he's talking about either. Granted spellings have changed over the past 300 years. Like having " chace " instead of " chase " and an "s" that looks like an "f". But its not as difficult as some sites and its an awful lot of fun finding out. The stuff in there is AMAZING. Don't let it put you off folks!!! |
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: Malcolm Douglas Date: 17 Apr 01 - 05:33 PM I'm always surprised when I find that there are people here who don't know about this extremely useful research tool! A search of the Forum for Bodleian gets quite a lot of hits; mind you, they're mostly from me, as Bruce tends to call it the "Bodley" (Oxford nickname). Malcolm |
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: Liam's Brother Date: 17 Apr 01 - 06:45 PM Malcolm, I'm surprised that most people are content to get their songs from other people's CDs, tapes and LPs... but I guess that nearly what you're saying.
All the best, |
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Subject: RE: Bodleian Library-Oxford From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 17 Apr 01 - 07:09 PM In the initial announcennment I saw it was called Bodley Ballads. The title on the website is Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads. Mike Heaney, in several emails I've saved, calls it Bodleian Ballads Online. [bodley rather than bodleian is in the email address] Call it what you like. I've only been on the top floor of the Bodleian Library (named after Bodley), Duke Humphrey's Library, where the manuscripts are kept, and went through MS Ashmole (not Ashmoleian) 36/37 (two bound together) and MS Ashmole 38. |
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