Some time back I discovered Rise Up Singing on Amazon and nearly ordered it - before I realized it contains no melodies. That's fine for songs with which I'm already familiar, but what do you do if you don't know the melody for a song you'd like to sing?

They have a whole set of CD's with all the melodies on them. Mind you, that's a lot of music, so they could only fit one or two book chapters on each CD, which means the complete set is pretty pricey. You can look into it at their website: <link>

But in my experience, it really is true that you learn new songs by singing them with other people. I know I attend more events with group sing-a-longs like this than most people, but some cities even have public organized Rise-Up-Singing groups, listed on that QuakerSong website above. The books aren't some tune-less come-on to buy the more expensive CD's.... the books really are the heart of it, like a low-cost hymnal for non-church singing groups.

I love this book... I'm an extremely amateur guitar player and the chord arrangements are perfect for me. I take the book camping or just strum in my apartment.

I've definitely wished I knew the melodies to some of the book's songs, but the thing is, with 1200 songs, it's not hard to find ones that you know and like (or that you learned growing up and then forgot you knew). If there's a particular one you especially want to learn the melody for, it's often possible to find it online.