Why do Person results have a First Line field?

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Haruo's picture

I was looking for the Katharine Lee Bates person page and was amazed and amused to find that the search results quite properly put her at the top of the list, but that there was anybody else in the results, and that what they all had in common was the First Line "O beautiful for spacious skies" except for Sister Winter, who had "How beautiful...". It just seems kind of bizarre, both that "O beautiful for spacious skies" would have so many purported authors associated with it and, even moreso, that the results when I'm searching for a person should have a First Line list at all. FWIW my interest in Mx. Bates had more to do with tunes than texts, and specifically with tunes other than MATERNA.


Comments

When you use the "Search the entire Hymnary" option the search says something like "Hm, Katherine Lee Bates is a person, so I will return results that include Katherine Lee Bates and other people associated with her" which includes people who adapted Bates's texts, composers, descant composers and arrangers. You may notice, when using the old search result page that it says "Not looking for a person? Try texts, tunes, instances, or hymnals." If you try one of these you will see the texts associated with Bates and the tunes associated with Bates. What the search does is clearer on the new search page, where you have the results grouped into people, texts, tunes, etc. The reason it is showing you the first lines is that you most likely have the first line column turned on and the search remembers your preference. You can choose to turn it off and only get a list of names, or you can turn on other columns such as the tune column to help make the results clearer.