Steve Roud


Steve Roud is the creator of the Roud Folk Song Index and an expert on folklore and superstition. He was formerly Local Studies Librarian for the London Borough of Croydon and Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society.

Roud Folk Song Index

The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of over 240,000 references to songs that Roud has collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It began in around 1970 as a personal project, listing the source singer, their locality, the date of noting the song, the publisher, plus other fields, and crucially assigning a number to each song, including all variants. The system initially used 3x5-inch filing cards in shoeboxes. In 1993, Roud implemented his record system on a computer database, which he continues to expand and maintain and which is now hosted on the website of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library.
In the past few years the numbers have been widely accepted in academic circles.

Life and career

Personal life

Roud resides and works with his wife in Somersham, Cambridgeshire, England.

Awards

In 2004 Steve Roud was the winner of the Folklore Society's Katharine Briggs Folklore Award for The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland.
In 2009, Steve Roud was one of five people to be awarded the Gold Badge of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. This award recognises "unique or outstanding contributions to folk music, dance or song, distinguished service to the Society and/or exceptional contributions to the Society’s work".
In 2014 Steve Roud was given the Walford Award by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professional's Information Services Group. His book, The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, had won the Reference Award the year before.

Books

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