Theses dances are being served by very generous permission of their authors, who retain copyright. You may share these dances with others, but you may not sell them. Please help dance authors and do your part against entropy by mentioning the title and author of each dance when you call it.
The database contains 291 dances as of December 16, 2002. This page was last updated June 8, 2004 (updated my email address and the ftp link to a copy of the database).
The Dance Authors page lists those authors whose dances presently appear in this database.
A list of errata is available.
The database itself is available via ftp as a zipped FileMaker Pro 4 file (though this version may be somewhat out of date). It is set up to be a useful database for your own collection of dances (and is what I use). It should work on MacOS and Windows, though some features are Mac-specific.
There are other dance sources on the web (thanks to Robert Bley-Vroman of Contra Dance In Hawaii for maintaining this list).
If you have written dances you wish served please contact Russell Owen at rowen(at)u(dot)washington(dot)edu. Please do not ask me to serve other people's work unless you know the person and have reason to believe I can get permission. Keep in mind that this service is free, so I cannot pay royalties. If you have written a book and are worried about losing sales, please consider offering a few gems from your book; it might be good advertising.
The database is maintained by Russell Owen on a volunteer basis (and, alas, with ever less free time). The server is a PowerMac G4 running an old version of FileMaker Pro.