A Comprehensive Index of North American Hymnals

FAIN: PW-50710-10

Calvin College (Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4301)
Harry Plantinga (Project Director: July 2009 to April 2014)

The expansion and improvement of "hymnary.org," an online database of religious hymn texts and compositions.

Calvin College, in collaboration with Princeton Theological Seminary (PTS) Library and the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, propose a three-year project to lay the foundation for a comprehensive, online index of hymnals published in North America, covering all eras, denominations, ethnic groups, and genres. The project will incorporate the Dictionary of American Hymnology into the Hymnary.org relational database and scan approximately 1,000 hymnals from the Princeton Theological Seminary Library's Louis F. Benson hymnology collection, one of the world's great collections of hymnological literature. The project's systematic indexing of hymnals and its digitizing of actual hymn content means hard-to-reach information about popular religious life will be freely available for both popular access and path-breaking scholarship in ways that have never been possible before.