Ohio State Lima’s Tina Schneider has been named a Fellow of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada. This prestigious designation honors Schneider’s lifetime of work in preserving cultural, spiritual and musical history.
Schneider joined the faculty in 1999 and has spent her career combining musicology and library science. Today she is the director of the Lima Campus Library and a professor in the University Libraries. She holds a BA in music from St. Olaf College, an MA in musicology from The Ohio State University, and an MLS from Kent State University. This background helped her manage complex bibliographic challenges in congregational song, leading to her appointment as the society's director of research in 2008 and editor of the Dictionary of North American Hymnology. In 2009, she helped establish editorial guidelines to merge the DNAH database with Hymnary.org, a platform that now reaches millions of global users.
Schneider’s database work is driven by the profound human element of communal music.
“It’s important to talk about the phenomenon of people singing together. Singing does not require an instrument, of course, and so it is a universal means of human musical expression,” Schneider said. “Study after study has shown that making music strengthens both the mind and the body and helps to create community.”
This collective behavior extends far beyond religious settings.
“It is very common that when people gather, anywhere across the world, they sing. We see this today at sports events, birthday parties, graduation ceremonies, protests, and of course religious observances,” Schneider said. “I am particularly interested in congregational song, or the art form of what people sing when they gather for a religious purpose.”
Schneider views hymnals as vital cultural snapshots of specific historical eras.
"Congregational song matters because it helps to not only support a sense of community and but also express common beliefs,” she said. “Hymns and songs are passed down as cultural expressions and a cultural heritage, while at the same time, new songs are created with each generation for the same purposes.”
These shifts over time demonstrate how communities continuously adapt their singing traditions.
“Each generation has found it necessary to re-evaluate what it wants from congregational song, keeping some works, maybe changing them a little, and adding new ones each time,” Schneider said. “Some hymnals take more of their music from one particular area of the world, others draw from American traditions such as spirituals or shape-note music, and still others gather music from all over the world. It’s fascinating to look at the changes in focus and style over time.”
Her campus contributions have earned her the University Libraries Annual Teaching Award, the University Libraries Distinguished Scholar Award, the Lima Campus Faculty Award for Student Mentorship and the Lima Campus Outstanding Scholarship Award.