Editor's column (Oral Tradition, 28/2, 2013)

With this issue Oral Tradition offers a somewhat different vantage point on its subject matter: some two dozen essays introduce archives, physical and digital, that hold records of traditional verbal arts from around the world--brief summaries crafted by archivists and researchers directly involved in their creation, maintenance, or operation. To situate this perspective, a word about the genesis of this issue should suffice. Early in 2013, the fact became apparent to us that a searchable database of names, locations, and contents of repositories of the world's oral traditions was, as far as could be discerned, nowhere to be had.Not