From shoeboxes to the World Wide Web: the enthusiast as indexer

Based on interviews with Steve Roud, Kate Faulkner charts the development of the Roud Folk Song Index which holds 240,000 records (and counting) of English-language folk songs. Now hosted on the internet by the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS), it is a tool used internationally for research. Steve explains how he became interested in music and began indexing folk songs. He discusses the unique issues with folk songs and the problems with having an ever-growing index in the public domain. How the index has developed alongside changes in technology is a constant theme.