A shiny new feature has just been added to Hymnary's search capabilities: a new tool for searching tunes by their melody. If you've ever tried searching by incipit, you know that it is far from easy - you have to convert notes to numbers in your head, and if you drop a note or misremember a pitch, nothing comes up. This new tool aims to take the pain out of the process by letting you input your search melody directly in musical notation, with no mental gymnastics required! (Read all about how to use it here). Plus, it's an approximate search, so even if you miss a pitch here or a rhythm there, it will still find plenty of results (though you can always restrict it to exact matches, if you like). More details about the search engine's inner workings can be found here.

But being in its infancy, there still remains a lot of things to be done. Currently, there are around 2800 tunes that are searchable by melody, extracted from the MusicXML and MIDI files we have on hand. Some of them are different hymnal instances of the same tune, and some of them don't look that great on the search results page (many MIDI files don't contain enough information to format them nicely). As a result, we're working hard on some of our own ideas to improve both the interface and search results, but we're also anxious to get some user feedback. We're open to any kind of comment, question, or idea, so if you use the tool and have something to say, then let us know!

The Dictionary of North American Hymnology is online! Cheers! However, it may be incomplete or incorrect, and not all features may be working optimally, until we've had a chance to test it more thoroughly. You can read more about the DNAH project.

Over the next few days and weeks, Hymnary will be undergoing a number of changes as we merge our collection of hymn data with the extensive Dictionary of North American Hymnology.
On Wednesday, July 8, the Hymnary.org web site will be down for several hours as we import DNAH's over 1 million texts and nearly 5,000 hymnals. Afterward, our site will contain not only the added texts and hymnals, but also a number of new and revised features for viewing and searching the database.
Please note that the DNAH data may be incomplete or incorrect until we've had a chance to edit it, and some of the new features may not be fully functional yet. Thank you for your patience in this process!

You know you're a true hymn geek if the mention of John Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology quickens your heart. Well, true hymn geeks, you may need to sit down for this: Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology is online! The whole book has been scanned and uploaded to the Hymnary's sister site, CCEL. Right now, you can only browse the pages scans. To make this valuable information searchable, we need volunteers to edit the text. Once it is fully proofed and available as a CCEL book, we'll need volunteers to match Julian information with the appropriate Hymnary entries. Please contact us if you'd like to help.

Take a look at the recently added United Methodist supplement The Faith We Sing, the Presbyterian (PCUSA) supplement Sing the Faith, and the Revival Hymns and Choruses hymnal from Singapore.

It was recently pointed out that the Hymnary has no Canadian hymnals in its collection. Shame on us! Rest assured this is not due to an editorial bias. No, we simply haven't had anyone volunteer to enter those hymnals. Here are some Canadian hymnals that were suggested would be good additions to the Hymnary:

The Hymnary, 1930 - United Church of Canada
The Hymnary, 1971 - United Church of Canada
Voices United, 2007 - the present hymnbook of the UCC
The Book of Praise, 1918 - Presbyterian Church in Canada
The Book of Praise, 1972 - Presbyterian Church in Canada
The Book of Praise, 1997 - Presbyterian Church in Canada

Does one of these have your name on it? If you'd like to volunteer to add a hymnal to the Hymnary please let us know. Publishers, remember that we can often import your index files directly into the Hymnary database.

In this first ever Hymnary.org video tutorial, you'll get tips from Greg Scheer about searching more effectively. You're bound to learn something new about the Hymnary's powerful search tools.

We just added three new hymnals to the database:
Come Away with Me, Gather Comprehensive 2, and Sing Justice! Do Justice!. If anyone is interested in helping proof these hymnals or connect authority records, please let us know.