Folklinks

Folk and Fairy-Tale Sites

© 1996-2020

compiled by

D. L. Ashliman

as a companion to
Folk and Fairy Tales: A Handbook
Greenwood Press

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Contents


Search Engines

The best tool for Internet research is not a comprehensive list of favorite sites, but rather a repertory of a few efficient search engines and reliable indexes, together with a basic understanding of how to use them. The starting place for almost any Internet search is Google.

This site's use of keywords is simple and efficient. Word groups set off by quotation marks are treated as single units. Thus the search term "fairy tales" will find only web sites containing that phrase, but not the same words appearing separately. The keywords "little mermaid" copenhagen will find sites containing Copenhagen and Little Mermaid in any order, but Little Mermaid must appear as an unbroken phrase. Google, like most search engines, is not case sensitive; lower-case letters can substitute for upper-case ones, and vice versa.

Although Google is very thorough, one can usually locate further sites by conducting the same search with additional engines. The following are proven performers:


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Encyclopedias and General Reference Works

Folktale and fairy-tale researchers should not overlook general encyclopedias as sources for basic information about authors, collectors, movements, genres, and the like. The user-generated Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia contains a wealth of information and is generally reliable.


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Research Libraries

Online catalogs of large libraries are excellent sources of bibliographic information about published folktale books. However, please note that these catalogs do not provide access to the books themselves. The following electronic catalogs are well designed and provide information about immense collections:


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Electronic Text Indexes

Thousands of books and shorter pieces, many of them relevant to folk and fairy-tale studies, are available gratis on the Internet as electronic texts. The most comprehensive index of such texts in English is the University of Pennsylvania's Online Books, which currently lists over 20,000 titles. It also includes links to numerous foreign-language electronic libraries.

To assist in finding a desired text among their thousands of listed titles, Online Books includes a number of search tools. Two hints for browsing:

The Online Books data base is also available through the World eBook Library, which includes links to a large number of reference works (dictionaries, multilingual dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias), academic libraries worldwide, and other research tools.

The Digital Book Index combines and integrates the free books listed through Online Books with commercial titles available for a fee. The subject-matter search tool is very useful. A search under the category "folklore, myths, legends, fables" yielded over 100 titles. This site requires a sign-on procedure, but its use is without charge.


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Libraries of Electronic Texts

Each of following electronic text libraries contains a substantial collection of works relating to folk and fairy tales.

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General Fairy-Tale Sites


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Individual Stories and Types


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Film and Fairy Tales


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Storytelling


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For Children, Parents, and Teachers


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Organizations and Journals


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Foreign-Language Sites

Danish/Norwegian


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Dutch


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French


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German


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Russian


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Turkish


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Revised October 27, 2020.