[PW] Re: How to research "where is this joke from"

[Fred Shapiro]

I am surprised that no one in this thread has mentioned the efficacy of 
full-text online databases in tracing joke-origins.  LexisNexis, ProQuest 
Historical Newspapers, Newspaperarchive, American Periodical Series, 
America's Historical Newspapers, and the online archive of the Dallas 
Morning News, to name only the more useful ones, offer so many millions of 
pages of searchable text that they are quite powerful for joke research. 
For folk-jokes, these databases will not unearth the ultimate origins of 
the jokes, but they will push their origins back in time and perhaps 
suggest geographical locii.  For jokes created by professional comedians, 
the databases will sometimes make clear the actual originators.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press
Yale Law School                             ISBN 0300107986
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
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