Backfilling instances from authorities: bad idea

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Thu, 04/11/2013 - 14:54 — Haruo

I'm trying to fill out the HWC1986, and particularly where the Topic is concerned I am being stymied by the fact that the database is autofilling in Topics which do not reflect the structure of that hymnal. For those of us who are serious about the scholarship in the database, and who believe instances should be recorded verbatim and reflect what is in the hymnal where the instance occurs, this is a major red flag. I am thrilled to see the authorities linked by a consistent set of Topic headings, but the Instances should not be bound by that. If a particular hymnal tradition insists on seeing "Lift High the Cross" as a Christmas song, the instances that say so should say so, and should not be burdened by what other traditions say it's for; on the other hand, neither should other instances that see it as being about Missions and Evangelism be forced to show it as a Christmas hymn! Autofill is anathema to proper proofreading.


Comments

Fri, 04/12/2013 - 09:25 — dianneshapiro

The reason the topics are appearing when you enter a text in this hymnal is that the topic index was uploaded before all the hymns were entered. The topics that you see are from the topic index from the back of this hymnal. I am currently working on adding this hymnal.

Fri, 04/12/2013 - 11:19 — Haruo

HWC1986 is the pew hymnal at my church, so I really wanted to have it readily searchable here, but if you're in the middle of it I'll stop. At least I'm glad to hear the huge number of topics that were showing up uninvited were actually from the hymnal and not from all the other hymnals with those hymns (I was truly amazed, because the topics would show up before I even linked the text authorities...

It's not like I don't have other hymnals to work on! ;-)

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