Representative Poetry On‐line <http://www. library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/intro.html> is a searchable database of English poems that was created for use by students, specifically those attending the University of Toronto. Currently, the collection contains over 2,000 poems by almost 350 poets. These works cover the span between the Old English period up through the twentieth century just out of the protection of copyright. All works within the database are deemed to be in the public domain according to the copyright laws of the country of which the poet was a citizen when the poem was written. Ian Lancashire of the University of Toronto’s Department of English founded this electronic collection in 1994, and he continues as the editor.
Poetry On‐line started as an electronic version of the third edition of Representative Poetry, last printed in 1967, which contained 730 poems. Since 1994, Lancashire has added many more titles. Each poem is located within its own file and lengthy titles are separated at major breaks to aid in loading speed. There are four ways to access titles. The first is by poet from an alphabetical list contained within the database from which users can access poems. The second index contains the titles of poems alphabetically by letter. The third is an index of first lines. These first three indexes are familiar to readers of poetry from the indexes found in printed poetry anthologies. The fourth index is unique and one of the most useful features. It provides a means of accessing the poems through a keyword search which looks for any appearance of the search term within the poems themselves. This feature provides a powerful tool for the comparison of literature. When the poems are accessed through a keyword search, a list of poems containing the word appears. When a title is selected, the searched term will appear highlighted, making it easy to find. The Online collection also contains a glossary of terms, writings on poetry, a timeline of poets’ births, deaths, and publication dates, as well as a calendar which lists these previous events by date rather than chronologically.
The files are very plain and mostly text. This makes them easy to use, quick to load and fast and cheap to print. The poems are listed by line, as they would be in printed texts. Line numbers are necessary in discussions of poems by students for in‐class discussions and papers, and by scholars for research and reference. The inclusion of line numbers is missing in many electronic versions, rendering them less desirable than the printed formats. Some line numbers are hyper‐linked to notes that might appear at the end of a chapter or book in a printed copy. The texts are based on the original versions of the poems, as seen in the works in which they first appeared, meaning little modern editing has been done. Each file contains some information on the poem, such as the date it was composed, when it was first published and the work in which it first appeared. The entries also include what type of poem it is (sonnet, epic) and anything special about its form, such as rhyme scheme. There are also links following the poems that lead the user to other works by the poet and information about the author.
In the future, Ian Lancashire plans to add more authors, revise the poems and notes already in the database, create more indexes for accessing the works held and include works of prose by the poets about their poetry. The publisher has given permission to use the poems and to copy the HTML version to persons for non‐commercial and educational purposes, such as teaching, studying, and research, as long as the copyright information stays attached to the copy. This Internet collection is highly recommended to high school and academic libraries.
