The Filk Book Index

  

December 25, 2012: I've created a spreadsheet to make it easier for people to submit songbook descriptions in a way that I'll be able to convert to XML. Grab either the OpenDocument spreadsheet or the Excel spreadsheet, fill it in the best you can, and email it to me. Thanks for your assistance!

August 22, 2009: Some changes by Jesse Weinstein to the CSS stylesheet have been incorporated. The most obvious change will be that names now appear in normal order rather than the bookish "last, first" format. Let me know if any problems turn up.

The MASSFILC Filk Book Index is ... what it says, an index of filk books. It has its origins in the old Pocket Printed Filk Database, and the initial files are built from data taken from there. Each page has publication information on one filk book, along with a list of the songs it contains, with information about the authors and the original songs. Hopefully this will be a useful resource in itself.

In picking what to list, I've had to make tough decisions. First, I include a book only if it consists primarily of songs of fannish origin. This can be a tough call. Second, just to limit the task, I don't list periodicals. This also has its rough edges, as some books come out in series, and the distinction between a "zine" and a "book" is often vague. Sometimes it's hard even to tell if a collection of pages is a publication or just something that was handed out at a con. In the last analysis, the decision is mine, whether it's right or wrong.

But wait, there's more! Under the viewable pages, everything is XML. This allows people to do many things with it. To find out the details, click here. Or if you just want to browse the index, look through the list. More will be coming.

You will need an XSLT-capable browser to view these pages properly. Older browsers may display them as raw XML or require you to download them.

The XML index of the songbook files may be useful for harvesting. It doesn't have a schema, but the format should be obvious.

Songbooks with song listings:

Songbooks with partial information, or bibliographic information only. Song listings hopefully will follow, if available:

Convention program books, with information only on songs contained within, not on other convention-related text:

Early NESFA songbooks, with information obtained from NESFA's web page. A song list is given only for the NESFA Hymnal, Volume 2, first edition (since it happens to be exactly the same as for the second edition):

Lost books. These are books for which only a citation or two is available. There's no guarantee for any of the information about them, even (in some cases) that they are filk books.

The master site for this index is http://www.massfilc.org/filkindex. It is mirrored at:

Other mirror sites or sites based on these files will be listed here as I learn of them.

These pages compiled by Gary McGath.

Contributors to the original PPFD, from which these files were built, include Mark Mandel, Greg McMullan, Virginia Taylor, Rafe Culpin, and Roger Burton-West. Contributions to this index have come from Paul Mangan, Harold Stein, and Jesse Weinstein.

Downloading, mirroring, and adapting these files is permitted and strongly encouraged. This index is virtually indestructible -- with your help. Please take an occasional snapshot of it. If it becomes necessary to reconstruct it, all files are dated, so it should be simple to determine who has the latest versions.

There are probably some egregious errors, given the sheer amount of data here. Please let us know of any needed corrections.

Where I know that attributions in the books are inaccurate or incomplete, I've corrected them. This may not be the preferred practice for archivists, but I think the historical accuracy for the songs is more important than reproducing the attributions in the books.

More filk books are listed at the UK Filk Music Database. Some entries in this collection are based on its information.

MASSFILC Home Page
Page last Updated: 21-Jun-2024