The is of "liturgical use" choices seems somewhat limited. Are these the only choices in this area or are these suggestions? Do these correspond at all to the designations that are given in many hymnals?
This is a really good question. Here's my understanding of how the various indices are divided:
Lectionary week - The week/liturgical season in which the hymn can be used. I.e. "Hosanna, Loud Hosanna" on Palm Sunday, Year A, B, or C. I think those fields were "reverse populated"; that is, someone filled in appropriate hymns from a lectionary week's page, and that info shows up on the hymn's authority page. I'm not sure if editors continue to fill out this info on the hymn authority pages.
Topic - You'll notice that there is no topic field on the authority page. That's because this is entered into instance pages exactly as it appears in the hymnal.
Liturgical Use - If I remember correctly, this field was added at the same time as the Lectionary Week. The idea was that hymns could automatically be added to a particular lectionary week and narrowed down to, for instance, a communion hymn for the 2nd week of Advent. That was the idea, but I don't see that it's actually working at this point.
We editors need to discuss this some more. The first thing that can be done is to put the Liturgical Use drop down list in liturgical, rather than alphabetical order. Next we need to figure out if this is even useful. Should we eliminate it? Should it have more choices? Is it redundant with the topic index? Should we try to get a few volunteers to go through lectionary guides like "Call to Worship" or "Sundays and Seasons" to beef up our lectionary use suggestions?
What I'd love to see eventually is a "topic taxonomy." That is, taking all the instance topics culled from hymnals and turning them into a standardized list: join together "processional hymn" and "opening hymn" and then making them sub-headings of a "gathering" section, etc. This is perhaps a doctoral dissertation rather than a hymnary project!
I agree with the idea of setting up some type of hierarchical listing. It would make more sense to have large topic with sub-headings that we could choose from. (I think that "Celebrating Grace" has taken the track of larger topics and done a great job with that.) While this would not and never could take into consideration all possibilities, at least there would be some sort of continuity and aid in search results being more accurate and complete. I would love to hear from others regarding their feelings on this. I would love a couple of examples of a hymn and its classification in liturgical use, topic/s, etc. Let the discussion begin!
I found another fully treated hymn "Lord, You Give the great Commission" which does not have any liturgical use indicated? Why then is it fully treated??
We are trying to prepare about 100 fully treated hymns this summer. The ultimate goal is to have perhaps 1000 fully treated hymns, if we can find funding. Only one is published, so if you run across them you're probably seeing unpublished, possibly incomplete ones.
We are trying to add liturgical use and lectionary week if relevant. However, we don't want to have too huge a list of suggestions for lectionary weeks, and the ones that are there now are hand picked, so we are unlikely to add too many more.
If you have a choice for liturgical use and don't put in a designation, does that not prevent the hymn from being fully treated? Is there a way to override this so that a hymn could be fully treated/
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This is a really good
This is a really good question. Here's my understanding of how the various indices are divided:
Lectionary week - The week/liturgical season in which the hymn can be used. I.e. "Hosanna, Loud Hosanna" on Palm Sunday, Year A, B, or C. I think those fields were "reverse populated"; that is, someone filled in appropriate hymns from a lectionary week's page, and that info shows up on the hymn's authority page. I'm not sure if editors continue to fill out this info on the hymn authority pages.
Topic - You'll notice that there is no topic field on the authority page. That's because this is entered into instance pages exactly as it appears in the hymnal.
Liturgical Use - If I remember correctly, this field was added at the same time as the Lectionary Week. The idea was that hymns could automatically be added to a particular lectionary week and narrowed down to, for instance, a communion hymn for the 2nd week of Advent. That was the idea, but I don't see that it's actually working at this point.
We editors need to discuss this some more. The first thing that can be done is to put the Liturgical Use drop down list in liturgical, rather than alphabetical order. Next we need to figure out if this is even useful. Should we eliminate it? Should it have more choices? Is it redundant with the topic index? Should we try to get a few volunteers to go through lectionary guides like "Call to Worship" or "Sundays and Seasons" to beef up our lectionary use suggestions?
What I'd love to see eventually is a "topic taxonomy." That is, taking all the instance topics culled from hymnals and turning them into a standardized list: join together "processional hymn" and "opening hymn" and then making them sub-headings of a "gathering" section, etc. This is perhaps a doctoral dissertation rather than a hymnary project!
I agree with the idea of
I agree with the idea of setting up some type of hierarchical listing. It would make more sense to have large topic with sub-headings that we could choose from. (I think that "Celebrating Grace" has taken the track of larger topics and done a great job with that.) While this would not and never could take into consideration all possibilities, at least there would be some sort of continuity and aid in search results being more accurate and complete. I would love to hear from others regarding their feelings on this. I would love a couple of examples of a hymn and its classification in liturgical use, topic/s, etc. Let the discussion begin!
fully treated hymn
I found another fully treated hymn "Lord, You Give the great Commission" which does not have any liturgical use indicated? Why then is it fully treated??
fully treated hymns
We are trying to prepare about 100 fully treated hymns this summer. The ultimate goal is to have perhaps 1000 fully treated hymns, if we can find funding. Only one is published, so if you run across them you're probably seeing unpublished, possibly incomplete ones.
We are trying to add liturgical use and lectionary week if relevant. However, we don't want to have too huge a list of suggestions for lectionary weeks, and the ones that are there now are hand picked, so we are unlikely to add too many more.
Liturgical use
If you have a choice for liturgical use and don't put in a designation, does that not prevent the hymn from being fully treated? Is there a way to override this so that a hymn could be fully treated/
Mary