Quoteland.com grew out a perceived lack of resources on quotations on the Internet. In searching for quotes to be used in a school yearbook, David Borenstein soon discovered the lack of resources on quotations. He posted a few of his own and discovered the number of hits that his homepage received indicated the need for a resource on quotes. From this grew Quoteland.com. The end result is a multimedia archive of quotations that inspire, amuse, anger or simply provoke the end user.
Quoteland.com includes historical documents, such as the US Constitution and the Magna Carta, great speeches by such diverse individuals as Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King Jr (his “I have a dream”), Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Richard Nixon (resignation speech) and Franklin D. Roosevelt (declaration of war). Some of these are also available as audio files. There are also audio clips of commercials (e.g. US Marines famous “Be one of the few … ”) to television and movies to music.
The quotes are also not limited to one style – they are not simply historical quotations or even well known quotations. They include the usual historical quotations such as Churchill's “We shall fight on the beaches” to the absurd of Monty Python's “The quest for the Holy Grail” and Rocky Horror Picture Show. This is the strength of the collection – it covers all aspects and does not attempt to be pretentious. One problem noted is geographical bias. It is obvious that the main emphasis is on American resources: presidents, documents, speeches, commercials – most are American. However, Quotelend.com does not deny this bias; it is upfront and I have to acknowledge that they have never stated that they want to cover the world in their resources.
Searching is simple. Enter a term and press the search box. Simply entering “pigs” gives several results. It is also possible to search by category called Topics. Click on the Topics button on the top banner and the user will be taken to a page of topics. All topics that I searched for were included in this listing to some degree. For example, instead of librarians, search libraries. Unfortunately there are no see references leading from the one to the other but it is logical.
Results are grouped in some manner. For libraries, the only results are listed under a books category. For pigs, there are three categories: Quotation Matches, Animals and Government. These categories are hyperlinked so one can simply click on the heading to get further relevant results. However, I could not find a listing of the categories. It would have been helpful to have such a reference. When in the results, the quotation is given along with the person to whom the quote is assigned. In some cases, the title of the source of the quotation is given; in most there are no references. Also, even when the reference or source of the quotation is given, it is minimal at most. An example is “Matthew Scully, ‘Our companions in creation’, The National Post”. Without a listing of the resources used, it is difficult to further the search for the actual source of this quotation; a minor point, but one worth noting.
My major problem with Quotelend.com is the amount of promotional material. Each page is overwhelmed with advertisements. I realize that it is important to have funding to keep such valuable web sites going, but it is hard to ignore the amount of publicity. Even when in the results screen, our first choice when facing a quote is to “Engrave this quote in our store!” where we can purchase personal gifts. In contrast, the forums are extremely useful. One can simply click on the Groups button and enter a massive collection of input from the users of this web site. A welcome addition where we, as the users, are encouraged to be active participants in the collection.
I would not use this web site alone. I would consider it useful along with Bartleby's at www.bartleby.com/ Recommended, but with reservations due to the massive amount of advertising.
