An archive-exploration system for the Hunting Songs of the Lakeland Fell Packs

Abstract

From everyday users to expert archivists, there is a keen interest in being able to search digital library catalogues via domain-specific languages and queries. This paper presents a proof-of-concept system that enables library users to search musically for songs or pieces that match to sung, hummed, or typed note queries. We chose to work with a corpus of 80 Lakeland Hunting Song tunes (Items) that have been collected recently, and for which the archivist wanted to make a resource that was easily searchable in terms of its musical content. Existing systems such as that at folktunefinder.com are robust to rhythmic changes but not to missing or interpolated notes, so we employed a geometric hashing approach as the basis for determining matches and as a potential improvement on existing work. An evaluation indicates that the system works quickly and effectively. We discuss some of the examples arising from its use, and indicate how future work building on this proof-of-concept system may make it possible to search other collections of songs or pieces in a more natural, musical way. Our archive-exploration system is available for trying out at https://hse.glitch.me.