Dance Instruction Manuals | Search Page


Searching the Collection

Several ways are provided to search and retrieve the contents of the over 200 volumes included in this online collection. The following information is intended to supplement the Search Tips that apply to all American Memory collections.


Search by keyword

Search by keyword provides the means to search for a particular term or phrase in EITHER the Bibliographic Information (the information found in the Library of Congress catalog record which describes a given book) OR the Full Text (the transcribed text of the entire book).

 A search of the Bibliographic Information returns a list of book titles. The list is arranged according to relevancy ranking (i.e. the degree to which the book is relevant to the search term or phrase). Each title on the list is linked to the associated Bibliographic Information. The Bibliographic Information provides links to both the Full Text and the Page Images for the book.

 A search of the Full Text returns a list of book chapters. This list is also arranged according to relevancy ranking. (Note that more than one chapter from the same book might appear on the list.) The headings in the list are in the form BOOK TITLE--CHAPTER TITLE. Each heading also includes the following four Display Choices:

 Page Image Viewer - Provides a link to the complete set of digital images of the book pages beginning with the first page.

 Full Text - Provides a link to the transcribed text of the particular chapter. The occurrences of the search term in the transcribed text appear in bold. Note that when the full text for an item is not available the link provides a message to that effect along with a summary of the book based on the Bibliographic Information. The occurrences of the search term in the Bibliographic Information appear in bold.

 Table of Contents - Provides a link to the Table of Contents to the transcribed text of the entire book. When Full Text for the item is not available this Display Choice does not appear on the list.

Bibliographic Info - Provides a link to the Bibliographic Information from the Library of Congress catalog that describes the book.

 

Browse by Subject | Author | Title

The three Browse options provide access to the subject, author, and title indexes of the Bibliographic Information. The entries are arranges alphabetically.

 

Complete Author/Title List

The Complete Author/Title List provides author, title, and publication information (much like a bibliography) for the entire collection. The list is arranged by author. Items without an author attribution appear at the beginning of the list and are arranged alphabetically by title. Each entry on the list provides Display Choices for Full Text (Table of Contents), Page Image Viewer, and Bibliographic Info. These links have the same function as the Display Choice links described above.

 

Search Terms

 There are many variations of the terms associated with social dance. When formulating a keyword search it is recommended that that the searcher tries as many variations of a given term or phrase as possible. Some examples follow:

 branle

contredance, contredanse

courante, corrente, corant, coranto

English country dance, country-dance

galliard, galiarde, gaillarde

galop, galopade, gallop, gallopade

German Cotillon, Cotillion

gitana

minuet, menuet, minuetto

pavan, pavane, pavanne, pavana, padovana

polka

polka mazurka

polka redowa

sarabande, saraband, sarabanda, zarabanda

schottisch, schottische

valse a deux temps, waltz a deux temps, waltze a deux temps

varsovianna, varsovienne

waltz, valse a trois temps, waltze a trois temps, plain waltz

  

Diacritics

When keying a Keyword search term it is not necessary to key diacritics (or "accents") for foreign language terms. In most cases typing the letter without the diacritic will retrieve the desired term. For example: keying the name Pecourt will retrieve Pecourt and Pécourt.


Dance Instruction Manuals | Search Page