Square dancing doesn’t fare too well in most online encyclopedias; see

• Square Dancing: Swing Your Partner!
• Square Dance, an Encarta Encyclopedia Article Titled “Square Dance”
• Encyclopædia Britannica Online: You can’t get to this without joining (or signing up for a 30-day free trial…and I did, just for you all). The square dance article is two paragraphs of reasonably accurate information. However, it ends with this enigmatic statement: “Formerly danced in five main figures, the contemporary square dance is composed of three.” Hmmm, wonder what that means.

  The Britannica had another interesting entry for the “Big Apple,” which apparently, in the ’30’s, was a square dance version of the jitterbug, where dancers did jitterbug moves prompted by a caller, although they also did their own moves a lot.

However, here’s a chance to write a scholarly article on square dancing that will be available to everyone. Nupedia, the open content encyclopedia, is a new project in the spirit of Linux and the Open Directory Project…that is, it will be created by volunteer editors and writers, and the content will be open:

The content of Nupedia is “open source” in approximately the same way that the source code for Linux is “open source.”  This means, in brief, that anyone can use the material from Nupedia on web pages, in books or pamphlets, on CDs, etc., for profit, for educational purposes, etc.  You may do this at your discretion, so long as you credit Nupedia prominently as the source and you do not try to deny others the right to distribute Nupedia material

Surely, somebody out there in square dance land would like to undertake to write a history of square dancing that would have tremendous distribution and influence.

BTW, as of 12 April 2000, squaredanceland.com is still available as a domain name. So is squaredancecountry.com.