Preserving hymn texts carefully
Historic and regional hymn collections can contain older spelling, local punctuation, OCR errors, transcription differences and source variations. Preserving hymnals online requires balancing readability with respect for the source text.
Why corrections are careful
Not every unusual spelling is automatically a mistake. In multilingual hymnals, a word may look unfamiliar to someone outside the language community but still be correct in context. Corrections should therefore be reviewed by collection, language and hymn number.
How the archive improves
The site is structured so each hymn has a permanent page. That makes it easier to identify a problem, suggest a correction and improve the archive over time without changing the whole collection at once.