One of the most powerful features of the Digital Tradition database is the ability to search for songs according to a variety of criteria. You can begin a search by clicking on the Search button in the main song list window, or by choosing Search from the Edit menu.

Conducting a search

The search tool is fairly self-explanatory. Choose a search category (described below) from the menu, enter a keyword, and press the search button.

The progress bar shows you how far the search is through the database, and songs are listed as they are found. You can stop the search at any time by pressing Esc.

Once a song has been found, you can double-click on it to view it.

Types of searches you can do

Titles

This option allows you to search for substrings in the titles of songs. The search is not case sensitive. Currently there are no wildcard or complete-word options for searching.

Song Text

This option allows you to search for substrings in the complete texts of all songs in the database. It's somewhat slow, but if you're looking for a particular word or phrase, it works.

Authors

This option allows you to search for substrings in the author field of songs. Not all songs have authors listed, and a few only list the author name in the main text of the song.

Keywords

The compilers of the Digital Tradition database assign keywords to each song that is entered. This assignment is somewhat haphazard, but it does allow for broad categorizations of songs. One song can have several keywords associated with it. When you search for Keywords, the search field turns into a menu with all of the available keywords listed on it.

Labels

If you have the Digital Tradition installed on a hard disk (not on a CD) you can assign labels to songs to create your own categorization schemes. This option allows you to search for all songs which you have assigned a particular label to.

Child Numbers

This option allows you to search for ballads collected by Francis J. Child (1825-96) in his "English and Scottish Popular Ballads" (5 vol., 1883-98). Child categorized ballads into approximately 305 groups of variants. If the song you're looking for has a Child number, you can search for other songs with the same number to find related variants.

Laws Numbers

This option allows you to search for ballads collected by G. Malcolm Laws, Jr. in his two major works: "Native American Balladry: A descriptive study and bibliographical syllabus" (1964) and "American Ballads from British Broadsides: A guide for students and collectors of traditional song" (1957). These ballads are assigned a letter (A-Q) followed by a number.

DT Numbers

DT numbers are an extension of the Child and Laws numbering systems created by the compilers of the Digital Tradition database. Songs with variant versions are assigned a DT number to categorize them; you can search for these numbers to find all variants of a song in the database. Note, however, that these numbers have only been assigned recently, so there may be older variants in the database that aren't categorized.

Tune Codes

Tunes in the Digital Tradition database are given distinct 7-10 letter names to identify them, and you can find all of the songs that use a particular tune by searching for these tune names. When you are viewing a tune, the tune code appears at the right of the control bar below the score. By clicking on the search button next to the tune code, you can call up the Search window with the tune code already filled in.

Date Modified

In recent years, the date a song was entered into the Digital Tradition has been recorded in the database. These dates appear next to the editor's initials at the bottom of the song window, and are usually Apr or Oct and a year (since the database is updated twice a year). The most useful function of this search option is generating a list of all the songs added since the last release, so the current release date is automatically filled in as the search key when you choose this option.