Folklinks

Folk and Fairy-Tale Sites

D. L. Ashliman
as a companion to
Folk and Fairy Tales: A Handbook
Greenwood Press

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Search Engines.
Encyclopedias and General Reference Works.
Research Libraries.
Electronic Text Indexes.
Directories of Electronic Text Sites (All Subjects).
Directories of Folk and Fairy-Tale Sites.
Libraries of Electronic Texts.
General Fairy-Tale Sites.
Individual Stories and Types.
Film and Fairy Tales.
Storytelling.
For Children, Parents, and Teachers.
Organizations and Journals.
Foreign-Language Sites.

Search Engines

The best tool for Internet research is not a comprehensive list of favorite sites, but rather a repertory of a few efficient search engines and reliable indexes, together with a basic understanding of how to use them. The starting place for almost any Internet search is Google.

This site's use of keywords is simple and efficient. Word groups set off by quotation marks are treated as single units. Thus the search term "fairy tales" will find only web sites containing that phrase, but not the same words appearing separately. The keywords "little mermaid" copenhagen will find sites containing Copenhagen and Little Mermaid in any order, but Little Mermaid must appear as an unbroken phrase. Google, like most search engines, is not case sensitive; lower-case letters can substitute for upper-case ones, and vice versa.

Although Google is very thorough, one can usually locate further sites by conducting the same search with additional engines. The following are proven performers:

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Encyclopedias and General Reference Works

Folktale and fairy-tale researchers should not overlook general encyclopedias as sources for basic information about authors, collectors, movements, genres, and the like. The following are reliable, easy to use, and gratis, except as noted.

The user-generated Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia contains a wealth of information and is generally reliable.

The Columbia Encyclopedia has long served as the standard for one-volume reference works, and is now available online at the following sites, each with its own search engine.

The MSN Learning and Research site is an easy-to-use interface that combines results from Microsoft's Encarta Encyclopedia with those from external web pages. Enter a word or phrase (for example folktale or fairy tale) in the "Search Learning" field for a list of articles and sites. Some articles from the Encarta Encyclopedia can be accessed without charge, while others require a paid subscription. The articles "Folktales" and "Fairy and Fairy Tale" (both gratis) are particularly useful.

The justly famous Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1911 is available online. The web version is flawed by innumerable typographical errors introduced in scanning the original text, as well as by irritating pop-up advertisements, but it still provides much information available nowhere else on the Internet.

The Dictionary of the History of Ideas (1973-1974), long out of print but now available online, is a compendium of essays about pivotal ideas in all fields. It contains much information that integrates folklore studies with other disciplines. Its online search feature enables a user to find articles anywhere in the work containing desired terms, for example folk or fairy tale.

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Research Libraries

Online catalogs of large libraries are excellent sources of bibliographic information about published folktale books. However, please note that these catalogs do not provide access to the books themselves. The following electronic catalogs are well designed and provide information about immense collections:

COPAC, a union catalog combining the resources the largest university libraries in the United Kingdom and Ireland plus the British Library.
Library of Congress . Of special interest at the Library of Congress is the Folklife Sourcebook .
Libweb, Internet resources from libraries in over 115 countries.
Indiana University Libraries. One of the world's largest folklore collections.
Melvyl, the online catalog of the University of California Libraries.

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Electronic Text Indexes

Thousands of books and shorter pieces, many of them relevant to folk and fairy-tale studies, are available gratis on the Internet as electronic texts. The most comprehensive index of such texts in English is the University of Pennsylvania's Online Books, which currently lists over 20,000 titles. It also includes links to numerous foreign-language electronic libraries.

To assist in finding a desired text among their thousands of listed titles, Online Books includes a number of search tools. Two hints for browsing:

Search for the word fairy, folk, folktale, folktales, tale, or tales in the title field. Note that the search function uses only whole words, so a search for tale will not find a title with the plural form tales.
Browse in the subject-matter section under the Library of Congress classification GR, folklore.

The Online Books data base is also available through the World eBook Library, which includes links to a large number of reference works (dictionaries, multilingual dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias), academic libraries worldwide, and other research tools.

The Digital Book Index combines and integrates the free books listed through Online Books with commercial titles available for a fee. The subject-matter search tool is very useful. A search under the category "folklore, myths, legends, fables" yielded over 100 titles. This site requires a sign-on procedure, but its use is without charge.

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