Folklore on the Internet.
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| mummers | 25,100 | |||
| mummers' play | 8,600 | mummers' plays | 4,380 | |
| "mummers' play" | 2,190 | "mummers' plays" | 1,070 | |
| mummer's play | 2,080 | mummer's plays | 937 | |
| "mummer's play" | 583 | "mummer's plays" | 151 |
Ranking of www.folkplay.info
mummers >100 mummers' play 17 mummers' plays 16 "mummers' play" 27 "mummers' plays" 15 mummer's play 8 mummer's plays 11 "mummer's play" 8 "mummer's plays" 11
What’s in front of www.folkplay.info?
- 1. General Christmas site - run by Staffs school
- 2. Drama history book
- 4-5. Excellent Sussex site
- 9. Ashdown Mummers - still hawking pagan rituals
- 10. Martin Collins’ script collection - dodgy quality
- 11-12. Green Man Mummers - New Zealand
- 14. Norse Pagan re-enactment site
- Rest mostly one-location sites
And just after…
- 17. Modern compositions - Wedding & New Brunswick
- 19. Article in Brazilian Portuguese
Observations on the Ranking of www.folkplay.info
- www.folkplay.info is the best folk play site
- Quantity and quality of information. High traffic
- Should be near the top of the list
- Why so low down?
- Avoiding the non-preferred term "Mummers’ Play"
- Dilution of links from other sites - 3 different URLs
- Why are other sites in front?
- Heavy use of the term "Mummers’ Play"
- Less dilution with alternative terms - Older sites - More time to acquire external links
- Heavy use of the term "Mummers’ Play"
Databases - Searching for Texts
- Literary Texts - poetry, prose, drama, etc
- Literature Online (LION) – Chadwyck-Healey
- Full-text searching
- Folk Song Lyrics
- Bodleian Broadside Collection
- Images of broadsides + titles, first lines and subjects
- Authoritative
- Bodleian Broadside Collection
- Digitrad Lyrics Database - www.mudcat.org/
- Full-text searching
- Variable quality and authenticity
- Combined search: Digitrad or general web search, then Bodleian
Variability of Oral Texts
Behold a lady bright and gay
Behold now my lady
Behold the lady bright and gay
I am a lady bright and fair
I am a lady bright and gay
I’m a lady bright and gay
In comes a lady bright and gay
In comes I, a lady bright and gay
In comes I, the lady bright and fair
In comes the lady bright and gay
To see a lady bright and gay
Genealogical Investigations
- Investigating Informants & Participants
- e.g. Keith Chandler’s work on Cotswold morris
- Web Resources
- www.familysearch.org - Mormons' database
- www.genuki.org.uk – UK & Ireland family history
- Other family name websites
Example Genealogical Investigation
- Cornish folk play script
- Supposedly from Mylor, late 19th century
- Orthography suggested late 18th/early 19th century
- List of actors – e.g. Pentecost Langdon, Henry Solomon, etc
- Investigation
- Search for actors’ names in www.FamilySearch.org
- Found a generation born c.1770 in Truro, suggesting performance late 1780s
- Follow-up and outcome
- Confirmation in Cornish archives - The actors were all Cordwainers
- Rediscovered the manuscript - Consistent with the proposed new date
- Paper published in Folklore, April 2003
- Would not have happened without the Web
Other Finding Methods
- Online Directories
- Which headings should folklore appear under?
- Arts & Humanities?
- Religion?
- Entertainment?
- Regional? etc.
- Patchy coverage - Rely on webmasters submitting their site
- Uncritical inclusion
- Which headings should folklore appear under?
- Portals
- Effectively specialist directories
- Comprehensive and/or critically selective
The Internet as a Liability
- Text as Images
- Computers cannot read words, so cannot search them
- Quality Issues
- Including plagiarism and faction
- Long-term Viability of Websites
- Including archiving
- Creating work
- Queries from the public
Images versus Full-text
- Images of text
- More feasible with diminishing storage costs
- Relatively quick to produce - scan + catalogue
- Limited searching - catalogue data only
- Full-text
- Eminently searchable
- Slow - even with OCR - due to quality checks
- Illustrations may be omitted
- Both
- Search on text - display the image
- Can tolerate poorer quality text transcriptions
Quality Issues
- Anyone can publish online
- No peer review
- Information and/or ideas may be out of date
- Info may be inaccurate - e.g. bad transcripts
- Plagiarism
- Faction - Fiction presented as plausible fact
- Is this different from paper publication?
- Easier to do
- Cheaper production costs
- Exposure to a much wider audience
Addressing Quality Issues
- Lack of peer review
- Establish peer-reviewed E-Journals & resources
- Out of date Information & ideas
- Challenge the authors - sources & justification
- Direct them to valid sources of information
- Plagiarism
- Challenge the author - or the webmaster’s ISP
- Seek acknowledgement or deletion of lifted material
- Faction
- Ask for a clear "health warning" to be added
- Inaccuracy
- Feedback corrections to the webmaster/author
Website Viability Problems
- Resource Issues
- Reliance on a single webmaster
- What if they change jobs, lose interest, or die? - Too few contributors
- Reliance on a single webmaster
- Infrequent updates
- "Static" websites tend to be penalised
- Disappearing websites
- Site deleted - Expired/Cancelled subscriptions, Closure of host, etc.
- Moved sites - Webmaster changes ISP or moves to new employer
- Transient pages - especially news & events
Addressing Viability Problems
- Resource Issues
- Reliance on a single webmaster
- Document layout standards, technical procedures
- Train backup webmaster(s)
- Use a content management system
- Too few contributors
- Maintain the network - Online & offline communication is key
- Reliance on a single webmaster
- Infrequent update
- News sections, events lists, etc
- Lost websites (and email addresses)
- Create archive backups of sites, just in case
- Search by full title for new location
- http://www.archive.org/web/web.php - "Take me back" database for lost & superseded web pages
- Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003
Internet Opportunities
- Publishing Online
- Adding functionality to text and graphics
- Collecting Online
- The benefits of online collecting slips
- Digitising Primary Sources
- To reduce wear and tear, and improve access
- Data Standards
- To facilitate information exchange and analysis
Publishing Online
- Offers more than text and graphics
- Include Multi-media
- Audio and video clips
- Webcams - e.g. Philadelphia Mummers Parade
- Hyperlinks
- Active contents pages
- Active references - Links to full-text sources, not just references
- Not written in stone. Corrections can be made and supplements added
- Example online folklore conference paper - "This is Mummers’ Play I Wrote"
Collecting Online
- Unsolicited contibutions
- Informants inspired by your online presence
- Online collection forms
- www.folkplay.info - Events list, Links, Researchers
- Benefits
- Automatic validation
- Machine-readable data
- International
- Statistical Information
- Seasonal usage of www.folkplay.info
- Folk play performance frequency from www.folkplay.info/Performance/Archive.htm
Online Collecting Slip
- www.folkplay.info/Flora_form.php
- Draft Flora Sheffielder collecting slip
- Technical Benefits
- Enforcing obligatory fields
- Restricted multi-choice options
- Cloning Personal Details for multiple submissions
- Potential
- Image queries - "What do you know about this?"
- Informants’ attachments - photos, images, texts
- Better handling of conditional questions
- Possibility of computer assisted filing, analysis, etc
Digitising Primary Sources
- Types of source
- Unique archive sources
- Manuscripts, fieldwork data, official records, etc
- Rare and fragile sources
- Early books, early audio & cinematic media, ephemera, etc
- Special Collections
- Folk drama, J.M.Carpenter, Bodleian Broadside Ballads, etc
- Unique archive sources
- Approaches
- Full-text transcriptions
- Images of text
- Graphic images
- Sound
- Moving images
- Etc.
- Impact
- Improved searching – Especially full-text searching
- Conservation and security of originals
- Better than microfilm
- Wider availability - more than one location
Data Standards
- Mark-up formats
- SGML, HTML, TEI, EAD, XML, etc.
- Merging data
- Unified databases
- e.g. Access to Archives (A2A), COPAC, etc - Disparate sources and different document types
- e.g. LION – Literature Online
- Unified databases
- Impact
- Easier data-sharing – Little or no reformatting
- Even greater accessibility
- Sharing software tools - e.g. phonetic searching
- Data mining – going beyond information retrieval
Benefits from Coding/Mark-up
- Computers are hard task-masters, so...
- Better quality assurance
- Less fudge
- Lots of little decisions add value
- e.g. Distinguishing between different types of personal name - Author, informant, collector, etc.
- More informative data
- Sometimes unexpected discoveries
The Internet as a Threat
- Loss of hard-copy sources
- Paper journals already being discarded
- Why keep anything on paper?
- Could the online data be destroyed?
- Licencing
- Paper is permanent. Licences are fixed term
- Access restrictions for licenced sources - disenfranchising some users.
- Sidelining archivists, experts, etc.
- Less need for personal contact with enquirers
- If it’s online, why visit the archive or library?
Summary - Positives
- Makes information more widely available
- Makes information more searchable
- Less reliance on discrete physical locations
- Less travel to distant archives and libraries
- Can work from your own desk – even at home
- Available "out of hours"
- Major time savings
- Adds new functionality to normal media & methods
- Facilitates the exploration of new ideas
- Makes things possible – e.g. investigating hunches
Summary - Negatives
- Search vaguaries
- Effective search terms
- Ranking results
- Variable quality of information
- Long-term preservation of online data
- Decline of hard-copy sources
- Disenfranchisement of certain users
- Sidelining professionals