Category Archives: News

Finding Aid Round Up

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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!

Sidney Vaughn Papers, 1978-1995, MS#441 [Revised Finding Aid]
Sidney Vaughn attended the Kerrville Bible Training Work and is an active artist. These papers document his involvement with the Namikango Mission in Malawi. These papers include 35mm slides from the Namikango Mission in Malawi.

Barton Warren Stone Papers, 1833, MS#449 [Revised Finding Aid]
These papers include one handwritten sermon by Barton Warren Stone.

Steve Holt, Sr. Papers, 1973-2018, MS#462 [Revised Finding Aid]
This collection includes Steve Holt, Sr.’s files and materials for marriage and family counseling, and files concerning drama ministry and urban ministry.

Steve Holt, Sr. Papers, 1973-2018. Center for Restoration Studies MS #462. Abilene Christian University Special Collections and Archives, Brown Library. Abilene Christian University, Abilene, TX.

Gary Joe Sorrells Papers, 1965-2017, MS#473 [Revised Finding Aid]
Gary Sorrells currently serves as Director Emeritus and as a member of the Board of Trustees for Great Cities Missions. These papers include correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, and audio/visual materials documenting the life and work of Gary Joe Sorrells.

Gary Joe Sorrells Papers, 1965-2017. Center for Restoration Studies MS #473. Abilene Christian University Special Collections and Archives, Brown Library. Abilene Christian University, Abilene, TX.

Churches of Christ Audio Collection, 1955-2007, MS#497 [New Finding Aid]
This accession combines three previous accessions into a single collection. R 2007.843; R 2009.191; and R 2010.098 (each containing one cu ft box) combined into a single collection. None of the accessions had any contextual information accompanying the recordings, nor provenance, nor unifying collector or entity responsible for them. It is likely that they comprise accumulated single item donations. Further, it is also likely that since they did not fit neatly into the recording activity of Jack Burford, that they did not properly belong with that collection. Box 1 (2007.843) contains 7 inch audio reels and one 5 inch reel; some are labeled and some are blank or unmarked. Names include: Randy Becton, Bill Banowski, Juan Monroy, Stanley Shipp, John Allen Chalk, Glenn Owens, Ken Mick and Bob Scott. Box 2 (2009.191) contains sermon and lecture tapes, many from Lubbock Christian University events, some pertaining to youth ministry. Box 3 (2010.098) contains unmarked cassette tapes, nine 5 inch audio reels, five reels in tin cases titled “Tales from the Great Book.”

Stay tuned for more installments of Finding Aid Round Ups!

On the Shelf: New items added to Center for Restoration Studies collections, January 2022

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In January our colleagues in Technical Services and Cataloging added 426 items to Special Collections holdings.  About 330 items fed into the main print collection (which we call REST), plus about 50 bound volumes of Christian Standard into our bound periodicals subsection of  REST.  One archival collection received a catalog entry and the first batch of rare Bibles (about 40 so far) was added to our general rare books collection.  Most of the additions to REST are tracts and pamphlets.  Some of the additions are newly published, others are new-to-us, and still others represent a second copy or a new-to-us edition or printing.  The tract project continues with most of new entries for REST coming in the form of newly-processed tracts, booklets and pamphlets.  We will have a fine set of tracts, all cataloged, when this project is complete.

Callie Faye Milliken (Special Collections Librarian) and Dr. John Stevens (President) at the beginning of the transfer of books from the ‘old’ library in Chambers Hall to the ‘new’ Brown Library. Dr. Stevens, holding a rare copy of Biblia Sacra, led a procession of students and faculty carrying volumes into the new facility. From https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth597528/?q=books

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.

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

University digital repository reaches milestone achievement

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ACU Library is thrilled to announce the university’s online, open-access digital repository reached a significant milestone with its one-millionth download!

By means of Digital Commons @ ACU (DC@ACU) Brown Library increases awareness and accessibility of the intellectual output of Abilene Christian University, its students and faculty, and its uniquely-held library and special collections. We preserve and provide access to student and faculty work, such as working papers, published articles, conference papers, presentations, senior theses, graduate theses and dissertations. University Special Collections and Archives utilizes DC@ACU to disseminate uniquely-held or otherwise unavailable archival materials, rare books, and periodicals as well as a range of historic university archives, media, and records.  The millionth download came in late December 2021.

Since its launch in September 2014 DC@ACU has been led by a team headquartered in the Brown Library.  Among the earliest collections posted were student theses and dissertations and sets of materials from special collections and archives.  These two sets remain the most-viewed and most-downloaded.  Student theses (575 items) have been downloaded over 385,000 times.  Rare print holdings from the Stone-Campbell Movement, reflecting the historic faith commitment of ACU, contains almost 25,000 books, periodical issues, photographs, archival material and audio-visual files, have been downloaded over 485,000 times.

DC@ACU usage map 2014-2021

Add to that faculty work from across the university along with open-access scholarly journals, and the platform has reached users on every continent except Antartica (one day!).  That users from 18,884 institutions in 225 countries have accessed these materials clearly indicate the powerful reach of the platform.  Looking back, we can see how the platform was well-established by the end of 2019, just in time to serve user needs in 2020 and 2021 when many people around the world were online more, and have come to expect that research-quality materials can be readily and openly accessible on the web.

DC@ACU downloads by month 2014-2021

Top ten most-viewed items

How To Be Part of the Next Million
Promoting university faculty and student intellectual, creative, and scholarly work has been a cornerstone of the repository since day one. Submitting your work to ACU’s institutional repository is a great way to increase readership and citations, as well as support the open access movement! The ACU Library would love to offer support to faculty that are interested in learning more about how to get their works posted to Digital Commons. The easiest way to have scholarly articles uploaded to Digital Commons is through an automated process utilizing Activity Insight submissions – learn more about how this process works here. To learn more about Digital Commons and how to upload works or see readership statistics, check out this Scholarly Communications Support Guide. For one-on-one support and questions, please contact Erica Pye, Scholarly Communications Librarian, at exp10a@acu.edu.