User talk:Pdebee/Sam Henry's Songs of the People

Development notelog
I would like to create a WP article about Sam Henry's Songs of the People, i.e. the book itself.

I realize that, outside of the world of traditional/folk music, this book is probably viewed as nothing more than an admirable curiosity. In trad./folk music circles, though, it is considered a real cultural treasure. Since there already is an article about Sam Henry, I thought it would be useful to guide interested readers from the existing article about the man himself to an affiliated article about the book on his collection of 685 songs. The purpose of the article would be to enable Wikipedia readers to access an overview of the book's history, general structure and content, in a way that does not duplicate the book's detailed material (such as the songs' lyrics) in the WP article. WP readers who wish to research the subject matter further would then be better informed and might therefore decide to buy the book or view it at a library.

Step 1 - Create the article
I have now created a draft subpage of this WP article: Sam Henry's Songs of the People and have also updated its Talk page with the present text. It will take me several days to achieve a stub of the intended structure. Pdebee (talk) 16:08, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Step 2 - Structure the article

 * The overall structure of the article's sections is mirrored on the book's Table of Contents and each section includes a collapsible wikitable where each row provides minimal information for each song in the collection, displayed in the following format (shown here for the first song in chapter C17 of Sam Henry's collection):


 * Stubs for all 25 'song sections' are now in place in my draft article, each with a table containing the summary details of the first song in each of Sam Henry's 25 chapters. Before I populate all 25 tables with the rest of the songs, I'd like to focus on drafting one or more 'introductory' sections into the article, to summarize the 'History' of how the collection was assembled. Pdebee (talk) 20:20, 15 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Added a new column (in all 25 tables) to include the 'Mode' of each song, next to the 'Key' column (see sample above). This way, WP readers could sort each column and view together all songs in the same key or mode. Pdebee (talk) 21:35, 17 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Expanded significantly the structure (Contents) of the article and added the Infobox (albeit with a temporary image file from T.E. Lawrence's 'The Mint'). I also communicated with Sean Garrett [Intellectual Property Counsel at The University of Georgia Press in Athens, GA] to secure a hi-res file for the image of the book's front cover and also a formal license to use it in the infobox of the present article. I am now waiting to complete this task, so I can upload this file in the Wikipedia Commons. Pdebee (talk) 20:18, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Step 3 - Add an 'Introduction' to the book
[To do]


 * Communicated via e-mail with Dr John Moulden, who has sent me (on Tuesday 24 September, 2013, at 13:36 BST) the source text (in the form of two Microsoft Word documents) of the reference material written by him and cited in Songs of the People itself. This will enable me to cite the same sources in the present WP article, as I develop prose to describe the history of the book. Earlier today, I therefore added ref tags for these two sources, along with a third ref tag for Dr Moulden's address to the Library of Congress in May 2007. (See following bullet for details.) Pdebee (talk) 13:09, 25 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Added the following three reference citations to published sources about Songs of the people, in preparation for use in future edits: Pdebee (talk) 12:24, 25 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Include a ref tag to Dr John Moulden's article in Slow Air


 * Include a ref tag to Dr John Moulden's book: Songs of the People: Selections from the Sam Henry collection, Part 1.


 * Include a ref link to Dr John Moulden's address on the Sam Henry collection to the Library of Congress on May 2, 2007.


 * Added the following reference citation to an online source about Songs of the people, in preparation for use in future edits: Pdebee (talk) 18:01, 29 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Include a ref link to Dr John Moulden's blog entry on April 16, 2010 at The Mudcat Café's website, in which he mentioned the Northern Constitution editors who ran the Songs of the People column during Sam Henry's long illness.


 * Expanded the References section by adding sub-headings for Notes and Bibliography sub-sections. Pdebee (talk) 19:12, 30 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Added the following reference citation to an online source about Dr John Moulden, in preparation for use in future edits: Pdebee (talk) 13:55, 1 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Include a ref link to Dr John Moulden's page at the Moore Institute's website.

Step 4 - Populate the 25 wikitables
[To do]