The article focuses on the suitability of collections of texts for listing dialect characteristics. Attention has also been paid to the occurrence of some dialectal features in Z. Sobierajski’s Teksty z zachodniej Wielkopolski; 210 pages of his book contain 62,711 dialectal word forms. The material from the corpus has been confronted with M. Gruchmanowa’s Gwary zachodniej Wielkopolski (Poznań 1970) and the Atlas języka i kultury ludowej Wielkopolski (Wrocław…– Poznań 1979–2005). The corpus either lacks an entire group of forms regarded typical of the region’s dialects or the occurrences are very rare. Therefore, despite the ample material, in many instances an attempt at linguistic characteristics of specific dialects is futile.