The Abraham Lincoln Songster



The Abraham Lincoln Historical Digitization Project

Sponsored by the Illinois State Library and Participating Institutions

These songsheets are being made available for reference and study purposes; users who plan to reproduce or publish images from the Lincoln Songster must obtain permission from the institution holding the original material. At present these include: The Chicago Historical Society and The University of Chicago Department of Special Collections. For several songs in the Lincoln Songster there is a corresponding sound recording to which the user can listen. For instructions on downloading these audio files, please go to Audio Help. For help in searching the Lincoln Songster, please see documentation below.

Song Title:  (e.g., little giant)
Lyricist:  (e.g., bungay)
Composer:  (e.g., tucker)
Arranger:  (e.g., cull)
Date:  (e.g., 1860)

Search Full-Text Lyrics for: (e.g., honest)
Note: The vertical line (|) is the OR operator for both Keyword/Co-occurrence and Phrase searches. Space serves as the AND operator for Co-occurrence searches only. Wildcard characters may also be used (e.g., free.* will retrieve not only free, but also freedom, freemen, freely, etc.).
or 

Search Options:

Keyword and Co-occurrence Search    Phrase Search

Output Options:

Concordance Report (300 characters plus)    KWIC ("Quick") Report    Frequency by Title 


For questions or comments concerning the Project please contact:
Drew E. VandeCreek, Director, Abraham Lincoln Historical Digitization Project
Founders Memorial Library, Northern Illinois University
drew@niu.edu

Please direct comments or queries about this site to:
Electronic Text Services, The University of Chicago Library,
ets@lib.uchicago.edu.


How to Search the Lincoln Songster

I. Searching for Song Titles (Defining a Corpus and Document Retrieval)

The search form has two distinct purposes: 1.) to allow the user to locate particular song titles in order to view the digital facsimile, read through the full-text lyrics, or listen to the song recording online; and 2.) to allow the user to select one or more song titles in order to search the full-text lyrics. If the user does not enter word(s) into the "Search Full-Text Lyrics for:" box, the user automatically will receive a list of songs that can then be retrieved.

One should type "strings" into the song fields. Entering, for example, little gian will retrieve/search in the song "Get Out De Way, You Little Giant." (You may use upper or lower case letters; field searching is case insensitive.)

II. Search Options

A. Key Word or Co-occurrence Search (Default)

To search a single word in a defined corpus simply enter that word in the Search Form. (You may use upper or lower case letters; word searches are case insensitive.) Searching for more than one word in a single search constitutes co-occurrence searching. The vertical line (|) is the OR operator; either space bar or carriage return serves as the AND operator. If looking for every occurrence of the word "liberty" or the word "freedom" in a defined corpus, type liberty|freedom. If looking for occurrences of the words "church" and "state" within the same sentence in any order, enter church state.

B. Phrase Search

To search phrases click on the Phrase Search button. Phrase searching supports all boolean operators as does Key Word and Co-occurrence searching; however, Phrase Searching restricts the search to adjacent words in a particular order (punctuation is ignored). With the Phrase Search button on, the search church state would not retrieve "church and state," but only cases where the word church is next to the word state with the word church preceding.

C. Word Representation

1. Pattern Matching

Pattern matching with regular expression operators allows for the specification of a large number of words corresponding to a defined pattern. Entering, for example, fragment.* will retrieve not only fragment, but also fragments, fragmentary, fragmentariness, and fragmenta, The most commonly used regular expression operators are:

These expressions can be combined for more sophisticated searches.
Searching old|aged|ancient m.n|fellow.* will retrieve any of the three adjectives together with the nouns man or fellow in the singular or plural when they appear in the same sentence. Clicking on the Phrase Search button will determine that the adjective must precede the noun and that the adjective and noun must be adjacent.

2. Accent Representation:

Accented letters are specified by a combination of two characters with the vowel followed by the appropriate symbol. These are:

      grave = back slash (e.g., à = a\)
      acute = forward slash (e.g., é  = e/)
      circumflex = caret (e.g., ê = e^)
      cedilla = comma (e.g., ç = c,)
      diaeresis = double quote (e.g., ï = i")

To search regardless of accent use uppercase letters (e.g., to search naïveté regardless of accents type naIvetE).

III. Output Options

A. Concordance Reports

Concordance reporting is the default output option. This report indicates the number of texts searched, the terms searched for in the defined corpus, and the total number of occurrences in the defined corpus. Following this general information is a list of occurrences. Each occurrence is represented by a short citation consisting of abbreviations of the author's name, the title of the work, and a reference for where the word/words in question occur. References may be page numbers, acts and scenes, chapters and verses, paragraphs, or the like. Below the short citation there is a passage of context consisting of some forty words on either side of the key word, which is highlighted (in multi-word searches only the first word is highlighted). At the bottom of the report full bibliographic references for each work cited are displayed.

The reference listed with the short citation is linked to the page server, which allows you to retrieve full context again with the initial key word highlighted.

In cases where a search finds more than twenty-five occurrences, the report provides the first twenty-five occurrences with a link to the remaining occurrences of the report. Clicking on the link to the "Rest of Results" will retrieve the remaining occurrences. Note: when results number over hundreds or thousands of occurrences, the report may not be complete when you first start to view results. The server continues to append results until it has completed the entire report, which will be indicated by END OF REPORT. If you come to what appears to be the end of a report, but do not see the tag END OF REPORT, press your WWW Reload button to retrieve the rest of the results added since you first started viewing results.

B. KWIC ("Quick") Report

As in a Concordance Report, a KWIC (Key Word in Context) Report indicates the number of texts searched, the terms searched for in the defined corpus, and the total number of occurrences in the defined corpus. A KWIC Report differs from a Concordance Report in that it limits the context displayed to only some ten words of text for each occurrence. As in a Concordance report, clicking on the short citation reference will retrieve full context with initial key word highlighted.

In cases where a search finds more than twenty-five occurrences, the report provides the first twenty-five occurrences with a link to the remaining occurrences of the report. Clicking on the link to the "Rest of Results" will retrieve the remaining occurrences. Note: when results number over hundreds or thousands of occurrences, the report may not be complete when you first start to view results. The server continues to append results until it has completed the entire report, which will be indicated by END OF REPORT. If you come to what appears to be the end of a report, but do not see the tag END OF REPORT, press your WWW Reload button to retrieve the rest of the results added since you first started viewing results.

C. Frequency by Title Report

A Frequency by Title Report indicates a count of occurrences by title in descending order of frequency. If curious how frequently an author uses a term in one work as compared to his other works or in his works as compared to others' works, you could use this function. Any definable corpus or search can be used in generating this report. Note: Unlike Concordance and KWIC reports, this report does not display text.



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For questions or comments concerning the Project please contact:
Drew E. VandeCreek, Director, Abraham Lincoln Historical Digitization Project
Founders Memorial Library, Northern Illinois University
drew@niu.edu

Please direct comments or queries about this site to:
Electronic Text Services, The University of Chicago Library,
ets@lib.uchicago.edu.