A Church is Born: Church of South India Inauguration

Introduction > Luce Project

The need to scan the collection came to light as part of a grant-funded project to process and preserve the material in the Missionary Research Library Archives and the William Adams Brown Ecumenical Library Archives.

Providing wide access to the images fits within the Burke Library's mission, which is: to identify, acquire, organize, provide access to, interpret, and preserve for the future information in the field of theology and contextually related areas of study.

About the Project

In 2011, The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University Libraries, was awarded a three-year grant by the Henry Luce Foundation. Henry R. Luce is known for Time and Life magazines. He created his foundation in 1936 to honor his parents who were missionaries in China.

Two important archival collection groups at the Burke Library are part of the Luce-funded project: the Missionary Research Library Archives (MRL) and the William Adams Brown Ecumenical Library Archives (WAB).

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 to provide information for the development and preparation of missionaries, as well as a documentary source for the history of mission work.  Mott stated that his intention was to create “the most complete and serviceable missionary library and archives in the world,” one that would be interdenominational, ecumenical, international, and rich in source material.

Active missionaries consulted the library’s materials while on furlough and missionary boards, organizations, and individuals regularly donated materials. Originally located at the Madison Avenue headquarters of the Foreign Missionary Conference of North America, MRL moved to Union Theological Seminary’s Brown Tower in 1929.

Financial difficulties, which plagued MRL for years, continued until 1967 when it was fully integrated with the Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary. The Burke Library became part of the Columbia University Library System in 2004.

The William Adams Brown Ecumenical Library (WAB) was established in 1944 by vote of the directors of Union Theological Seminary as a memorial to Dr. Brown, who had been Roosevelt Professor of Systematic Theology at UTS. The ecumenical movement was a new interest in his later years, and the nucleus of the memorial collection came from Brown’s working office library. The Ecumenical Library officially opened on March 13, 1945. As it did then, WAB serves as a source for the documentation and study of modern ecumenism.

Completed

The project was to process, arrange, describe and make available a total of 573 linear feet of archives. Ultimately by December 2014, project archivist Brigette C. Kamsler, along with the assistance of students and interns, processed 781 linear feet of archives in 183 collections. The materials are fully described with all of the finding aids available on the Burke Library Archives website. The collections are having an impact on research, teaching and learning, and it would not have been possible without the assistance of the Henry Luce Foundation.
 

The Burke Library (Columbia University Libraries) / 3041 Broadway at 121st Street / New York, NY 10027 / (212) 851-5606 / burke@libraries.cul.columbia.edu