African Diaspora at the Internet Archive: Spreadsheet (2)

Well, it's already "Spreadsheet Friday" again! This week was really busy for me, so I didn't get a lot of work done on the African Diaspora Folktale Spreadsheet, but I made some progress! There are now 2600 stories from 37 different books.

And, of course, the big African Folktale Spreadsheet is available also (I ended up with over 10,000 individual stories there).

As I've explained in previous spreadsheet posts, you can search, sort, and filter this public sheet using all the usual Google Sheet features, and you can also make a copy of the sheet if you want to add your own columns, etc. The search is just by the story title, but that's a good place to begin. So, for example, if I'm looking for rabbits (and I'm always looking for rabbits!), I can search and get over 100 results!

I can also set up a filter so that the rabbit results are the only ones I see:

Those are just rabbits in the story titles; of course there are more rabbits out there. So, when I find a book that is a likely source to explore for rabbits, I can use the Internet Archive's own search tools to search the text of the book for rabbits. I just click on a link, check out the book (yay for Controlled Digital Lending!), and then I can search the book for all the rabbits in there. Here, for example, is Hughes' and Bontemps' Book of Negro Folklore: there are plenty of rabbits in there beyond just the stories with rabbit in the title! For example, I found this rabbit verse from a song along with some other animal references in the "Blues" section of the book:

You can see the search results BEFORE you check out the book, and you can also share the link with the search results already indicated too, which is a great way for teachers to introduce students to the power of search: as soon as the student gets there, they can see the search results and proceed accordingly! Here's the Hughes-Bontemps book with the rabbit search results in the link.

So, my little spreadsheet is really just a jumping-off point, a gateway into the Internet Archive where you can use the powerful text searches available there, helping you to find what you're looking for.