On the Shelf: New items added to Center for Restoration Studies collections, January 2024

In January our colleagues in Technical Services and Cataloging added 646 items to Special Collections holdings, with nearly all going into the REST collection.  The tract cataloging project is back underway with significant progress again this month. Besides new additions to REST, we added a half-dozen items to the Taylor Hymnal Collection and a few more to ACU Archives, ACU Authors, and our general rare books collections.

Photograph of four men sitting on their briefcases in grass, each wearing suits, matching hats, and looking at books. A house can be seen in the background.  Ca.1920s.  From Jesse P. Sewell Photograph Collection: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth597076/

Our goal is to build a comprehensive research-level collection of print materials by, for, and about the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement.  But beyond assembly and preservation, a collection should be discoverable by those who need the information.  Collecting and preserving is only part of our task; those objects must be described and made available.  Thanks to the close and careful work of our colleagues upstairs, who describe our holdings, these materials are now discoverable. By discoverable I mean a patron can utilize our online catalog (such as by searching by author, or title, or subject) to find these materials.

646 new items…cataloged, shelved, and ready for research:  Continue reading

Congregational history: Ravenna, Ohio, 1930

The newest congregational history in our collection arrived from a donor last week.  This pamphlet from the Christian Church in Ravenna, Ohio, from 1930 recounts a century of ministry.  The full booklet is available here.

One Hundredth Anniversary of the Christian Church, Ravenna, Ohio, May 11, 1930

We collect and preserve such congregational histories, anniversary booklets, along with directories, photographs, and to some extent we can accommodate bulletins and newsletters.  The full list of current holdings in our Congregational Vertical File is available here.

Be on the lookout: curriculum and instructional materials

Every congregation has a closet or workroom with old curriculum and instructional materials.  We are especially interested in curriculum produced by and for Churches of Christ and Christian Churches.  Pictured here are issues of Little Jewels, published by Gospel Advocate Company in Nashville, Tennessee, for young children.  The volume numbering suggests this series began publication in the 1880s.  We have precious few of them.  Items such as these were produced for the moment, consumed and cast aside as life went on.   We wish to locate and preserve this kind of material.  Titles such as Little Jewels are ripe for examining the history of Churches of Christ from several angles: spiritual formation of children, Biblical narration and storytelling, moral formation, the history of interpretation of Biblical texts, and they give a window into the practice of teaching in Sunday Schools.  That’s quite a bit of potential research value; and we could support that kind of inquiry if we had the materials at hand.  Please remember us the next time your congregation has a work day in the curriculum room.  Contact Mac Ice for further assistance: mac.ice@acu.edu

Little Jewels, Gospel Advocate Company, 1948

Little Jewels, Gospel Advocate Company, 1948

Little Jewels, Gospel Advocate Company, 1948