Using the online Opie Archive
We aim to make the Opies’ archival collection discoverable through digitisation, and detailed cataloguing and indexing. It will bring together the different parts of their collection, currently spread between the Bodleian Libraries, Folklore Society Archives and the British Library, via a single interface.
So far we have catalogued to item level the children's papers and covering correspondence of some 32 schools who contributed to the Opies' surveys. These are primarily from the pre-1960 period. We continue to add to the catalogue periodically so it is worth checking back to see if the content you are interested in has been catalogued. Note that the site is a work in progress so not all features are fully developed. Meawhile,
we welcome feedback from users.
Offensive Content
There are a number of materials in the Opie Archive which contain offensive content which is upsetting and unacceptable. We take very seriously our responsibility to make this material available in a way which is sensitive, respectful and accurate, and preserves its integrity as historical evidence. We are therefore actively reviewing the way in which this material is presented. In the interim, we have redacted the catalogue entries and digital images containing this content. If you need to contact us about this content,
please use our email address to get in touch.
Browse
At present, the Browse displays the
Children's papers and covering correspondence, c.1947-1989, of the
Archive of Iona and Peter Opie at the Bodleian Libraries [‘the Opie Working Papers’].
To ‘open up’ the next level, click on the + sign
To ‘close’ it, click on the - sign.
|
The Browse facility lists the material in a hierarchy, like a family tree, in the order in which it appears in the physical collection. By clicking on one level in the tree, you can ‘open it up’ and display its contents or the levels below it. The levels in the hierarchy are
box,
file,
document or
intellectual item. Examples of documents in the collection are an Opie questionnaire, questionnaire response, essay or letter. Items of folklore and language contained within these documents have been catalogued to a further level of detail as ‘intellectual items’.
To display the catalogue record at any point in the hierarchy, click on its title. At document and intellectual item levels, the catalogue record includes a thumbnail of the relevant page.
The thumbnail can be expanded to appear in a separate box from which it is possible to scroll through a multiple page document or item, zoom in and out, move around the image, view it full page, and download the image. The Bodleian attribution and shelfmark for each page is displayed below.
Note that the catalogue record for documents displays the name of the document creator (or contributing correspondent in the case of letters).
Only those pages which have been catalogued as documents and items can be viewed as digital images. Browsing the archive therefore shows which boxes and files have been catalogued in detail. Thus boxes 1-3, 9-10, 12 and 46 are currently available to search and browse on this website. More will become available as detailed cataloguing proceeds.
Search
The Opie catalogue is an online database. Information about the materials in the collection is stored in ‘fields’. Catalogue records contain the details of an ‘Item’ (a specific rhyme, game, saying, etc.). In each record there will be a field which holds the Title of the item, another which holds the Date it was collected, another for the Name of the informant, and so on.
Simple search
Type in one or more words and click on SEARCH. It will search ALL fields in ALL records.
The main drawback is that the Simple Search does not specify which field the search term should appear in. For example, searching for ‘Oxford’ will find items
collected in that place, but also
anything collected from a person called Oxford, or
the word ‘Oxford’ in the first line of a rhyme, or something published in the
Oxford Times, and so on.
Advanced search
In the Advanced Search, you can specify which field your search term should appear in, and you can combine different fields in your search. For example, you can specify a rhyme in the
Title field AND specify a location in the
Place Collected field.
On the Advanced Search page, there are four boxes in each row:
(1) Leaving the left-hand box set to ‘Any field’ will search ALL the fields. You can change it, to select the field you need, by clicking on the
down arrow within the box.
(2) ‘Contains all’ in the adjacent box is the default (i.e. the field must contain ALL the search words). Change this to ‘Contains phrase’ if you want the search words to be treated as a phrase.
(3) Type in the word(s) you want to search for in the next adjacent box.
(4) Change the search from AND, to OR, or NOT (see
Operators below) in the right-hand box.
A complete list of fields, and what they contain is given in the table below.
Search tips
In any search you can use an asterisk to truncate a word. For example, typing in
farm* will automatically find the words
farm,
farms,
farmer,
farming,
farmwork,
Farmington, and so on.
Putting words in double quotation marks forces the search engine to treat these words
as a phrase. Typing in “cup and saucer” will therefore NOT find a record which includes ‘I broke my cup, I broke my saucer’.
If you type in more than one word in a search box, without quotation marks, the search engine treats this as an AND search and it will only find records with
Word1 AND
Word2 (for OR and NOT searches
, see
Operators below).
Operators
These help you to refine your search. The default setting
between fields is AND, but you can change it to read OR or NOT. For example,
Title =
Each Peach NOT Place collected =
Oxford
will find all examples of Each Peach Pear Plum excluding those collected in Oxford.
Place Collected =
Oxford OR Place Collected =
Cambridge
will find material from both places.
Special considerations regarding place and date
Because of the nature of the material, and the way the Opies collected, there is an in-built problem with both
geographical places and
dates. We have assumed that if a child informant reports a game or rhyme, etc., they play/say it at that place and at that date. In this case, the
Place Collected and the
Place Played are the same, and the
Date Collected and
Date Played are the same.
However, adults often include their recollections of what they played and said then they were children in another location. In these cases, the place and date of collection (i.e. when the item was written down) are different from where and when it was actually done or said. This distinction is preserved as far as possible in the catalogue data. Otherwise, for example, a Welsh saying may be listed as being Scottish, a song not composed until 1960 may be indicated as extant in 1930, and so on. Children who have recently moved from one location to another present a similar problem.
Most users, in most cases, will be primarily interested in the
Place played and the
Date played, rather than
Place collected and the
Date collected.
Subject searching
We have indexed the items in the collection by subject, to allow for a wide range of search strategies. Subjects includes
- Nouns, such as colours, things, people, animals
- Verbs, such as running, jumping, hopping, and throwing
- Other parts of speech, as necessary.
Subjects can also be concrete or intangible.
In some cases, the item being indexed is
about the subject (a rhyme describing a cat is
about a cat), but at other times the item
features something (Hopscotch
features hopping, grid-lines, a stone, numbers, etc.). In the thesaurus, no distinction is made between
about terms and
feature terms.
Index terms are given as
plurals.
Subject terms are organised as a hierarchical
thesaurus, like a family tree. The idea here is that
BROADER (i.e. more general) terms include
NARROWER (or more specific) terms. For example,
dogs would appear in the following hierarchy:
NATURAL WORLD
Animals
Mammals
Dogs
The entry for
Cats would have a similar hierarchy, as would
Rabbits and
Donkeys.
This makes it possible to search for
Dogs or
Cats specifically but if you search for
Mammals, you will get both, and the other mammals as well.
Because natural language has many synonyms, variant spellings, abbreviations, and so on, we decide on ‘preferred terms’ (the words which are allowed to be used) and ‘non-preferred terms’ (those which are not), e.g.
Desserts USE
Puddings
How to search by Subject
In the search box to the right of
Add Subject +, you can simply put in a word (e.g.
red) and click on
Search
or, if you want guidance as to what words are used and how they fit into the thesaurus, click on the
Add Subject + box to call up the subject thesaurus. If you scroll through the list, you will find that the word
red has two BROADER TERMS, which represent the higher categories in which the word fits - namely ‘Colours’, and ‘Colours, Numbers and Symbols’. So, you might decide to search for
colours, to find
red,
blue,
green, etc. all at the same time.
Please note that the subject indexing is a work in progress so results may not be comprehensive.
Displaying your search results
On the Search page, you can specify how you want to see your results:
(1) L
ist – selected fields only shown in a compact list. Click on the Title of the item you want to open up the Full Record and see the attached thumbnail image.
(2)
Detailed list - Selected key fields in catalogue format, plus thumbnail of item. To see all the fields, click on 'Full Record'.
(3)
Map – displays search results as ‘hits’ plotted on a map.
Sorting search results
At the Search page, you can also
sort your hits, by various fields.
Fields
Main fields |
|
Title |
As given by the contributor or derived from the item; see below for Standard title
|
First line |
Of a song, rhyme or chant |
Standard no. (e.g. Roud) |
The Roud Folk Song Index is a database which provides a standard numbering system for songs known by variant titles. |
Generic term |
Genre or category of item (NB this is a work in progress so results may not include all examples). Represents the key user-oriented point in the hierarchical classification scheme (under development). See also fields Category (broad), Category (sub-category) and Category (specific term). |
Place collected or played |
See Special considerations above
|
Person name |
There are four person name fields in the database, according to the person’s role(s) as document creator, correspondent (letters), informant or collector. Searching Person name searches ALL these fields Person fields. The names of groups (e.g. Standard II class) and entities (e.g. Times newspaper) have also been entered here |
Person gender |
Deduced from person name, where possible; otherwise ‘unknown/unspecified’; groups may be male/female |
Content |
An indication of the item’s form or style, such as a text (stylised content such as a chant or rhyme), terminology, description, passing reference (such as a game whose name is mentioned but is not described), artefact, and annotation (by the Opies) |
Other fields |
|
Category (broad) |
The broadest level in a hierarchical classification of materials (under development) |
Category (sub-category) |
The second level in a hierarchical classification of materials (under development), sub-dividing the Category (broad) field, and in turn sub-divided by the Generic term field. |
Category (specific term) |
The lowest level in a hierarchical classification of materials (under development), sub-dividing terms in the Generic term field (see above) |
Collecting method |
Method used to obtain the information, e.g. questionnaire |
Document category |
The kind of document that contains the content |
Id |
Id number of the item (for page id, see shelfmark below) |
Title (standard) |
Standardised form of a variable title/variant spelling |
Person (collector) |
See Person above |
Person (correspondent) |
See Person above |
Person (creator) |
See Person above |
Person (informant) |
See Person above |
Person (intermediary) |
See Person above |
Person age |
Where this is stated or can be ascertained from the document |
Person age status |
Whether the person is a child or an adult (often in lieu of age), where this is stated or can be inferred |
Physical format |
How the document was made and the information is formatted on the page |
Place collected |
Special considerations above |
Place played |
See Special considerations above |
Place collected (schools only) |
|
Place played (schools only) |
|
Question answered |
Provides the wording of a specific question on an Opie questionnaire, where the item is a response to that question |
Setting (physical) |
Physical settings of games and play, when mentioned in item description |
Setting (temporal) |
Times of the day and times of the year associated with games and customs, when mentioned in item description |
Shelfmark |
The number given to the physical page at the Bodleian Libraries |