Finding Aid Round Up

Today’s blogpost is by Sidney Irwin. Sidney is a Master’s of Library Science student at the University of North Texas who is getting a general studies degree and a graduate certificate in archival management. Sidney is an Abilene, TX native who earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Abilene Christian University.

We’ve been busy writing finding aids for recent acquisitions and revising finding aids for sets of papers already in our holdings. You can browse all of our collections on DigitalCommons. See something below that piques your interest or could be useful for your research? Get in touch and let us know what you’re thinking about; we’d love to help!


John Clayton Papers, 1977-1990, MS#208 [Revised Finding Aid]

John Clayton was originally an atheist, part of the atheist group that made Madeline Murray O’Hair famous. In his work writing a book called All the Stupidity of the Bible he became convinced of Christianity. He is a retired teacher and geologist with multiple accolades in the field of teaching. He now travels the U.S. doing lectures on “Does God Exist?” This collection consists of materials from the “Does God Exist” ministry, including correspondence, written material, DVDs, and tapes. 

“Does God Exist?” ad packet letter, John N. Clayton Papers, 1977-1990. Center for Restoration Studies MS #208. Abilene Christian University Special Collections and Archives, Brown Library. Abilene Christian University, Abilene, TX.

Tom Tune Papers, 1960s-2006, MS#542 [Revised Finding Aid]

Tom Tune was a long-term missionary in Asia and the South Pacific, before which he did work in South America and the Mediterranean. He also served as The Christian Chronicle’s business manager for two years following when he and several church members acquired the publication and moved it to Tennessee. This collection consists of one reel-to-reel tape and one folder from the life and work of Tom Tune relating to Elizabeth Barnard, a Chinese missionary whom he wrote a book about. 

Michael Ervin Sadler Papers, 1970-2021, MS#580 [New Finding Aid]

Physicist Michael Ervin Sadler taught at Abilene Christian University for 40 years and was a pioneering faculty in the field. He received the American Physical Society’s Prize for Research in an Undergraduate Institution (1995), as well as two Fulbright Scholarships to conduct research in Russia (2002-03) and Bosnia (2010-11). He was fluent in Russian, which helped him to form research collaborations and connections abroad and host Russian scientists at ACU for guest research. He was a mentor for undergraduate work and also participated in community outreach organizations in a volunteer leadership capacity. This collection consists of one box of materials documenting Michael Sadler’s work as a physicist. 

George Willis Bailey Papers, 1937-2005, MS#592 [New Finding Aid]

George Willis Bailey was an influential preacher serving churches in Oklahoma, New York, New Mexico, and Texas. He also did traveling ministry work across the U.S and abroad. He was also a regular speaker on Herald of Truth radio and television for three years as well as a staff writer for three Christian publications and an author. The Bailey papers contain sermon notes and materials reflective of the breadth of his preaching career. It also contains materials collected by or presented to Bailey. Most of the materials are paper-based, but there are a number of cassette tapes and other media types. 

Kenneth Rufus Badgett Papers, 1954-1981, MS#599 [New Finding Aid]

Kenneth Rufus Badgett preached among Churches of Christ in DeQuincy, Louisiana, and Port Arthur, Texas. He was married to Lula Mae Starnes, sister of Trine Starnes. This collection contains one box of papers from Kenneth Rufus Badgett, consisting of sermon notes and notes about subjects preached or not preached.


Stay tuned for more installments of Finding Aid Round Ups!

On the Shelf: 2024 Year in Review

Each month I check in here to provide updates about the growth and development of our print collections.  We steward several print collections of books, periodicals (both bound and loose issues), tracts, and pamphlets.  We also catalog audio, video, and digital materials in several formats which were/are published or otherwise widely distributed; nearly all of them are either produced by the University or are Stone-Campbell-related.  These are discoverable through the online library catalog.  As an aside, we have tens of thousands of A/V items (reels and cassettes, mostly) in our archival collections.  These items are usually not published or mass-produced, such as sermons delivered at congregations.  These are discoverable, in varying degrees, through the finding aids we create for each collection.

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/

In nearly every case, when we add items to print collections, the new catalog records are also pushed over to Worldcat so they are globally discoverable.  Many of the Stone-Campbell items we preserve have never been cataloged before, so each month in my blog posts I call attention to how original cataloging is a tremendous contribution to knowledge about information resources from and about the Stone-Campbell Movement.  Additionally, I am always looking out for variant editions and printings of Stone-Campbell items so our collection represents the full breadth of our publishing activities.  These variations are also noted in the catalog records.

As we begin 2025, with great thanks to our colleagues and student workers in Technical Services, we can reflect on the addition of 7900 items* to our print collections. Thank you to Shan Martinez, Susannah Barrington, along with volunteers Monty Lynn and Gary Oliver, who created hundreds of original records, did–or supervised students in doing–copy cataloging for multiple hundreds of records and supervised several student employees to make sure the cataloging tasks were completed accurately and in a timely way.  Shan’s work in 2024 is especially significant in that she–again– cataloged box upon box of unbound periodicals this past year, and led a team of student workers to get everything processed, labelled, verified, and ready for our shelves.

*Some of these ‘items’ in my monthly lists are in reality only the titles of items which in the case of loose periodical issues represent many, many (many) more ‘items’ than might be readily apparent.  Some ‘items’ are titles of periodicals for which there could be one or one-thousand issues, multi-part video sets or multi-volume sets of books, but to keep the already-long monthly lists a bit more manageable, I edit out the duplicative titles. However, each physical item (except for single issues of periodicals) gets a barcode and call number, so there is considerably more work going on than meets the eye, even with such a large quantity of items as is listed.  For example, unbound periodical issues present a storage and cataloging challenge.  We store them in boxes (often multiple titles in a single box when we only have a few issues of a title), number the boxes, and when the box contents are cataloged, these box numbers function like a call number.  The boxes vary in size from custom archival boxes (about 10 x 13 x 4 in thick) to standard-sized bankers boxes with a few larger boxes here and there.  The cataloging work involves collation, arrangement, storage, and description, so there is quite a bit more work to cataloging these than you might realize.  Mac and student workers accomplished some of this, but Shan’s work at the point of cataloging is an added layer of verification of arrangement and description. This has been a years-long project that is just about caught up so far as the backlog is concerned.  By the way. some bulletins (single issues especially) are not cataloged but are filed in the Congregational Vertical File.  And in a few cases, we have substantial runs of bound bulletins and these are shelved with other bound periodicals.  Of course, we hope to acquire more and are perfectly content knowing the work will never truly be ‘finished.’

Here are the breakdowns of the number of items added by month in 2025.  If you’d like to see the titles and authors, browse these lists.

January: 646

February: 341

March: 581

April: 383

May: 409

June: 469

July: 1421

August: 769

September: 817

October: 373

November: 1028

December: 663

In order to prepare new items for our colleagues in Technical Services, I determine whether the item is within our collecting scope.  If not it goes to our colleagues for evaluation for possible addition to the circulating collection.  But if it is in scope, a student worker (I do this often, too) verifies whether we have the item already cataloged.  If not, we add it to the workflow to be cataloged.  If we already have a copy I compare its condition against the one on the shelf.  I also look for variant editions, printings, bindings, or other features (such as an author’s signature or gift inscription) that merit inclusion in a special note.   If the new book is in better condition that the shelved copy, I replace the worn copy.  If it is in comparable condition, it might go in the queue for scanning or digitization or I offer it for the circulating collection, or trade to another library.  We then take the items upstairs to Technical Services along with instructions for catalogers: where it should be cataloged (into the CRS collection or another sub-collection within rare books), who the donor is, and whether cataloging should make special note of any edition or printing or provenance.  When the catalogers finish, our student workers lead the way in making sure items are shelved, and I assist when needed.

Not only do these new (and new-to-us) titles represent the fine cataloging work of our colleagues and their staff, they represent dozens of donors who wanted to see the collection grow in scope, utility, breadth, and depth.  They believe in the power of library collections and have chipped in to make this collection a much better one.  We do not yet know how students and researchers will utilize these materials, but we look forward to the contribution they will make to our history.  And we look forward to what 2025 will bring to the shelves.

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