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My Purchased FilesPsalm 72 = the Benedictus?? Really, now!
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For some reason (not a good one, but apparently a controlling one) when I search for the hymns most frequently tagged for “Advent”, the fourth most common one says its title is “Canticle of Zechariah (Benedictus)”. But when I click on the link it turns out to be James Montgomery's famous metrical version of Psalm 72, “Hail to the Lord's Anointed”. This seems to me a very misleading selection of “Title” for this hymn. Usually the “Title” shown is one frequently printed with the hymn in question. In this case it appears the only connection is that in the UMH (#208) the first line of “Hail to the Lord's Anointed” is used as the antiphon with the Canticle of Zechariah (Benedictus). I think there needs to be a way to protect the user from such oddball instances. Couldn't it be indexed as “antiphons” instead of with the words? Or something? Ideally the full text of the canticle would be in the database and people who really wanted it to show up with the hymn could search for the full text.
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Hail to the Lord's Anointed
Search results are always instances. The system selects one of 76 instances of “Hail to the Lord's Anointed” that has the topic “Advent.” This time it has selected the instance with the title “Canticle of Zechariah (Benedictus)” It is possible to turn on the first line column in the results. We index by the first line; it is more important than the title. There are other nonsensical titles for this hymn, such as “Light” which is actually the tune title, not the title for the text.
Well, sure, but...
Thanks, Dianne, but I guess what I was trying to say was, why is the search engine showing titles (which as we both know vary all over the map) rather than the much more informative first lines? I think, from the point of view of being helpful to users, the use of the titles in this situation is a design flaw.
Search results
There are times when knowing the hymn title is useful. You have the option of turning on the column for the first line. The new search page shows both the title and the first line by default.