General help
Our online catalogues and indexes provide access to thousands of descriptions of items in the collections of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library (the Library and Archives of the English Folk Dance and Song Society).
They also provide access to online digital copies of significant parts of the collection. We also host the world-famous Roud Indexes to folk songs and broadsides. Additionally, we are developing a subject index to folk songs that currently contains entries for over 1,000 songs.
From the Catalogues and indexes menu there is a choice of six different options:
Library catalogue
Opens in a new tab and provides descriptions mainly of published material and commercially released audio-visual material.
How to use the Library catalogue
Archive catalogues
Provides descriptions to mainly manuscript material but also to field sound recordings, and the VWML collections of photographs, art & artefacts, street literature and ephemera.
Searching the archives also returns materials from other collections (Clare College Cambridge, The British Library and others) which were digitised and catalogued as part of The Full English project from 2012.
How to use the Archive catalogues
VWML indexes
Enables access to two indexes (Song, and Dance & tune) to material held in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library collections.
Roud indexes
Enables access to the two Roud indexes (Folk song and Broadside) and also the Roud Bibliography.
Song Subject Index
Provides access to the VWML’s ongoing subject index to traditional folk songs via a controlled-vocabulary thesaurus.
How to use the Song Subject Index
Map
Provides access to a browsable map from which you can link to records in the Archive catalogues, the VWML indexes and the Roud indexes.
Also available from the very bottom of the Catalogues and indexes home page is a global search facility enabling searching across the Archives catalogues, VWML indexes and Roud Indexes and Bibliography, but NOT the Library catalogue or Song Subject Index.
Detailed guidance on how to use the global search
General search tips for Archives and Indexes
[The following tips do not all apply to Library Catalogue; for that, see specific help page above]
- Place an asterisk (*) at the end of the main stem of a word to find variations of the ending of the word (including plurals). For example: a search for Mumm* will find catalogue entries containing the words Mummer, Mummers and Mumming.
- When searching for surname, try *Sharp to retrieve hits such as C.Sharp
- Use a ? to match just one missing character e.g. Franc?s will match Frances and Francis
- Using AND between words means the search will only find records containing all of the terms e.g. Barbara AND Allen. This is how the search works if no special commands are used.
- Using OR means the search will find records matching at least one of the terms: Horses OR Beasts
- Using NOT before a word will search for records that do not contain that word e.g. Morris NOT Bampton
- Put a phrase in quotation marks to match the exact phrase e.g. "sailors hornpipe"
Any of these commands can be combined with brackets to make more complex searches e.g. (Anglo AND Concertina) NOT English
Requesting access to Archive Items
All archive materials must now be ordered 3-4 working days in advance should you wish to consult the originals. If you wish to view a particular item or collection, please use the 'Contact us about this item' link on the top right of the archive catalogue entry. Alternatively, email [email protected], or phone +44 (0)20 7485 2206 ext.233 and give us the full details of what you wish to view, including the collection name, reference number, and title of the specific item(s) if applicable.
