Dictionary of North American Hymnology at Hymnary.org

The Dictionary of North American Hymnology (DNAH) is a decades-old project of The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada that aims to index all hymnals printed in North America to 1978. With its 5,000 hymnals and over 1 million hymn instances, the DNAH is now housed at Hymnary.org. The current editor of the DNAH data is Tina Schneider, former Director of Research of the Hymn Society.

The DNAH began under the guidance of Henry Wilder Foote with the vision of being American Julian. In 1952, the editorship fell to Leonard Ellinwood, head of the humanities section at the Library of Congress, and his assistant Elizabeth Lockwood. Upon Ellinwood's retirement, the DNAH database moved to Oberlin college in 1984 under the care of Mary Louise Van Dyke. Under the guidance of Paul Powell, it was keyed in and published on CD-ROM in 2003. The DNAH data was converted to a relational format by Bill Clemmons with funding from Point Loma Nazarene University and the Wesleyan Center for 21st Century Studies. The DNAH data was added to Hymnary.org on July 8, 2009. Because the DNAH has been an ongoing project for more than 50 years, we appreciate learning about errors or inconsistencies that you come across. Send us your feedback, bug reports, or suggestions!

Over the coming years, we hope to add hymnals and hymns that that were omitted in DNAH, add page scans for hymnals, and add information not originally captured in the DNAH project. We have set up a system for volunteer editors help with the work. If you would like to participate, or if you have a hymnal you would like to add to the index, please contact us.

Contact Information

The General Editor for The Dictionary may be contacted at:
Tina Schneider
General Editor, Dictionary of North American Hymnology
The Ohio State University
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