This is what I would really like to do ...

I'd like to put together a really good directory of poetry & quotes, catalogued by topic and Scripture reference.

I have several books like this ... but almost universally they've got a few good quotes/poems, with many more ordinary ones, that seem to be just chosen to fill up the category.

Meanwhile, I've got these wonderful, relatively obscure books of poetry, hymns, sermons and letters. And the material in them is disappearing from public view.

I want to put together a reference tool that will get this stuff acessible again, in a format where you can find what you want, when you want it.

This morning, I was skimming Mountain Rain - a collection of poems by Amy Carmichael. (She was a missionary who ran orphanages in India. She never married, and her whole life was consumed by rescuring children who had been sold into prostitution in the Hindu temples, and raising them to know the Lord. She spent her last few years confined to bed after an injury, and during that time, produced such wonderful writing.

There was so much wonderful stuff in this book ... yet I know when I NEED something on a particular topic, it will be so hard to remember where I saw it, and go back and find it.

Hence this cataloguing-project idea. I'm thinking of maybe doing it in an Access database, but if anyone out there has tacked something like this, I'd be interested to hear how you did it! I'd like to post it on a web page, so it would be available as I'm updating it. (Think of www.cyberhymnal.org ... only with more diverse topics, and done with poetry & quotes as well as hymns).

Suggestions anyone?

(note ... any poetry that rhyms the words "sorrow" and "tomorrow" is automatically excluded simply for annoying me). :)

Trinka