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Issue 2223: Update on Salute to San Diego

Object
Salute to San Diego (Dance)
Submitter
Marjorie McLaughlin (marjoriem)
Assigned to
Anselm Lingnau
Priority
Normal
Disposition
Ignored
Description

My apologies. I searched for the dance as “Salute to San” and truncated the full name, so it was returned as “approximate match” with the Salute to Sandy Gallamore as an approximate match on the tune. It’s certainly understandable why the indexing rules would treat it as such. When searching on the full dance name the correct Muriel Johnstone tune is retrieved.

You may not be aware that Sandy Gallamore was a teacher in the eastern US and who embezzled a very large amount of money from TAC while he was the Summer School Treasurer. He was convicted and served part of his prison term and released only because of the COVID threat. He is most definitely persona non grata among the North American dance community, hence my dismay when I saw his name associated with a dance from our branch collection.

Thank you for such a wonderful resource and as a librarian. I should have known why the search resulted in that display!

Best regards Marjorie

Previous Actions

  • Date  Jan. 31, 2021, 8:40 p.m.
  • User  Marjorie McLaughlin (marjoriem)

New issue submitted

  • Date  Feb. 1, 2021, 12:52 a.m.
  • User  Anselm Lingnau (anselm)

Assigned changed to »anselm« (previously »None«)
Disposition changed to »Ignored« (previously »New«)

FYI, the “quick search” function returns dances and tunes (and other items) whose names match the search term (more advanced search options for dances are available through “Complex Dance Search”). If the search returns both the name of a dance and the name of a tune that doesn’t imply that the dance and the tune have anything to do with each other, just that they have similar names.

I’m broadly aware of the Sandy Gallamore story and can see how this could trigger dancers in the US but in the database we’re interested in which dances and tunes exist. We certainly don’t want to deliberately dismay anyone through unfortunate but ultimately unavoidable juxtapositions of search results, but there isn’t really anything we can do about this short of removing all traces of Mr Gallamore from our database, which as a librarian you’d hopefully agree would be throwing out the bathwater after the baby has bolted the door.

Incidentally, this is not particularly well explained on the site, but if you have something to add to an existing issue ticket it’s best to use the “New Action” form on the database page for the issue as mentioned at the bottom the confirmation e-mail instead of filing another (new) issue. This keeps information in one place and helps keep the database tidy by avoiding superfluous issues. The issue system is in many ways too simple and could bear improvement, but it is still quite helpful and for the time being we need to live with it.

Anselm