I started at the Burke Library a little over a year ago. Not coming from a theological background, I was a little intimidated. However I quickly saw how my background in public history and public services could help do effective outreach to promote usage of the amazing materials in our special collections by Union […]
Category: History
The Papers of Caroline Worth Pinkham
So far this semester, I have had the pleasure of processing four collections within “Series 1. Papers of UTS Faculty and Students” of the Union Theological Seminary Archives. The creators of the first three of these collections had some things in common: all were born in the early-to-mid-19th century, male, and had long careers as […]
Update from an Intern
As I write my second entry as an intern of the Burke Library, I am struck by the great contrast between this day and my first day in January. In time for a number of faiths’ holidays, New York has at long last emerged from a long winter and spring has arrived. And, thanks to […]
“One small step” for the study of religions
The Burke Library’s special collections include hundreds of thousands of rare books, pamphlets, and manuscripts. Many of these works pertain to the Bible (its many versions and editions, their languages and interpretation), church history (especially the Reformation period and following), and theological scholarship and controversy (including incunabula, sixteenth-century English and continental pamphlets, and 19th century […]
What do armadillos, leprosy and Ebola have in common?
The world runs on strange coincidences, which have been cropping up a lot around here. For me, leprosy has been one of those coincidences. I was cataloging a DVD on a Catholic priest who worked on a leper colony in Hawaii in the early 19th Century (both the island and the DVD are called Molokai, […]
Organizing the Divine: Julia Pettee and the Union Classification System
The creation of the Union Classification System reads much like a recipe: 1 cup of Dr. Hugo Munsterberg’s classification, ½ cup of Dr. Charles R. Gillett’s classed catalog, mixed together with Charles Ammi Cutter’s classification and folded into 3 cups Alfred Cave’s An Introduction to Theology. But as with any recipe, the most important element […]
The Why
Now that you know a little more about the MRL and WAB collections, as well as the Luce Foundation, I thought it would be useful to explain the reason behind needing this project in the first place. Most, if not all, archives and libraries have what we call "backlog." Our collections are continually growing: we […]
What is MRL and WAB?
You may be asking yourself, why should I care about the Missionary Research Library and the William Adams Brown Ecumenical Library? History: The Missionary Research Library (MRL) was created by John R. Mott in 1914 after the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference of 1910. It was created in response to the need for a central resource […]