The Katie Geneva Cannon Digital Collection

  We are pleased to announce the latest update in the ongoing inter-institutional endeavor to create the Katie Geneva Cannon Digital Collection. This momentous project aims to make Dr. Cannon’s archives and papers, which span from her elementary school days through her later career, publicly available online. With this digital collection nearly complete, users can […]

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An Internship Exploring the Missionary Research Library

  The Columbia University “Ask a Librarian” Internship had been presented to me three different times on three unrelated platforms before I decided to apply. The first time someone close to me reached out and thought I would be a good fit. The second time it appeared in my school email. The third time it […]

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Interview with Johonna McCants-Turner

    This summer, Union Theological Seminary hosted the Association for Public Religion and Intellectual Life (APRIL) in its annual Summer Colloquium presented in partnership with Auburn Seminary. Each year, the colloquium brings about a dozen participants to “work on vital contemporary questions about religious life and social justice” in a collaborative discussion environment. This […]

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The Construction and Evolution of the UTS Campus: a Re-Imagined Exhibit

  With the new residential tower at 122nd and Claremont underway, construction seems to be on everyone’s mind these days. The Burke Library staff thought now would be an appropriate time to highlight the past and present of Union’s physical campus. Now on view on level L1 of the Burke Library, “The Construction and Evolution […]

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Belonging As a Latinx Seminarian 

  Seminary was an unexpected “next-step” for my life. My recent Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) experience has pulled me towards exploring the world of theology at Union (UTS) as a first-year Divinity student. As I was reading through the UTS Student Digest newsletter, I saw a job that contained the words “Justo Gonzalez” and “Hispanic […]

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Updating Finding Aids: Improving the Discovery of Archives at the Burke Library

  Like many archivists at CUL and beyond, I’ve found working remotely to be an opportunity to address back burner projects. Chief among these is the conversion of Burke’s 400+ finding aids, which were originally created as PDFs, into Encoded Archival Description (EAD) format — an XML standard for archival finding aids. You may be […]

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Research During a Pandemic: Interview With Documentary Film Researcher Heather Merrill

As a librarian and movie-lover, I’m always excited to assist filmmakers with their research — and this Fall, the Burke received a request from a researcher working on a documentary film about the first women ordained as priests in the Episcopal Church (the “Philadelphia Eleven”). The request came from Heather Merrill, an independent film researcher, […]

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Newfound Letter from a young Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Mahatma Gandhi

The Burke Library staff recently received a warm and exciting message from our friend Prof. Clifford Green, the Bonhoeffer Chair Scholar at Union Theological Seminary. He wrote eagerly telling us of the recent discovery in New Delhi of a previously unknown letter mailed to the famous resistance leader Mohandas Gandhi, sent in earnest by none […]

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The Eckley Sermons: a Manuscript Cataloging Mystery

Image of a handwritten sermon by Joseph Eckley, circa the late-1700s or early-1800s.

*NOTE: The Burke Library is currently closed and personnel are working from home due to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak (see Columbia’s COVID-19 guidance page for more information and consult the Your Libraries Online portal for increased access to e-resources during this time). We are sharing this post, written a few weeks ago, harkening back to […]

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Mapping the Holy Land: a New Exhibit, by Jeffrey Wayno

Visitors at the Burke Library may have noticed our new exhibit, Mapping the Holy Land, which showcases two items from our special collections—one from the rare book collection, one from the archives—to highlight how scholars of the past have thought about, and visualized, one of the most historic and contentious areas of our world. The […]

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