The Encyclopedia of Urban Legends is a comprehensive general reference work covering the oral narrative genre that is widely known to the general public as urban legends and often referred to by folklorists also as contemporary legends or modern legends (or modern urban legends). Whatever the terminology, these stories abound in contemporary culture, both in "folk" (oral-traditional) and in "popular" (commercial media-disseminated) versions. In fact, the Internet has become a major conduit for the spread of once-strictly-oral urban legends, as well as a useful source of information about them. Urban legends have interested journalists and academic folklorists for decades, and many of these stories eventually found their way into literature, film, television, and even popular music, often with creative artistic variations and sometimes involving gross misunderstanding of their status as "folklore." One might say that, like the legends themselves, the term "urban legend," has acquired a life of its own, separate from the original restricted usage coined by folklorists..