Episcopal Archives Launches Plans for a New Research Center
Episcopal News Service. May 25, 2000 [2000-108]
(ENS) The Archives of the Episcopal Church are looking for a new home. After more than 40 years on the campus of the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, the large (and growing) collections of group histories, meeting records, letters, photographs and other memorabilia of the life of the Episcopal Church must move out of their present quarters to make way for the seminary's growth. The seminary has set a 2005 deadline for the archives' departure.
To the archives' director, Mark Duffy, this signals a great opportunity.
"We were already planning to go to General Convention to ask that a committee look at the options available for a new space," he said. While the seminary board's decision last February came as "a bit of a surprise," he added, it was understandable. By 2005 the seminary's library will have outgrown its building -- even after the archives leave the library floor they now occupy.
"The seminary was simply being honest with us," Duffy said.
Five years is a relatively short time to find a new location, draw up plans and move the archives, but the need has been looming for years, he said. The material in the collection now fills not only the seminary space but also two warehouse storage units as well as some space in the Episcopal Church Center in New York City.
"Neither the warehouse nor the church center has the kind of temperature and humidity controls or the security that are needed for good document storage," said Duffy, adding that space is now at such a premium that he and his staff are being forced to make tough decisions on what gets sent to outside storage.
The collection is one that should be treated with respect, he said.
The Episcopal Church was among the first of the mainline Protestant churches to appoint a conservator, Francis Lister Hawks, to pull together the young church's scattered historical artifacts. Hawks went to work soon after his job was created in 1835, and his collection, including papers dating back to 1679, is at the heart of the church's archives today.
Through the holdings a reader can trace the church's emerging autonomy, search for identity, and its long record of global mission.
Duffy pointed out that today 40 percent of the visitors who come to do research in the archives are from countries outside the U.S. "They are people who come to Austin to study their own history," he said. "It illustrates that we really are part of a larger communion."
Because of missionaries' eagerness to record the cultures of the people to whom they had been sent, the archives' photograph collection is one of the finest in the country. A particular area of interest, Duffy said, is the pictures of native peoples of Alaska.
"People keep asking when we will digitize those so they can be available by computer," Duffy said. "That kind of accessibility is exactly what we're working toward."
Recent acquisitions included the personal papers of Bishop John Maury Allin and Bishop John Shelby Spong, as well as additional records of the administration of Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning. The archives also acquired the records of the Episcopal Society for Racial and Cultural Unity (ESCRU), an organization that forcefully confronted segregation in the church; the records of Integrity, the gay and lesbian advocacy group, and of the North Conway Institute, an interfaith network of education and public policy advocacy on the issues of substance abuse and alcoholism.
At this point, however, the Episcopal Church, once nearly alone in launching an effort to preserve church history, stands alone again as the only major faith group without a building dedicated to housing its archival resources, Duffy said. "It doesn't make sense for us to be a completely stand-alone operation," he said. "We're looking for space connected with a seminary, a college or a cultural institution."
A new 35,000-square-foot facility, he points out, would accommodate all the archives, with room for digital conversion of documents and photos so that they are accessible from anywhere. The space would also allow the archives staff to organize educational programs focusing on Anglican and Episcopal Church history.
"Even though we don't have a separate building, we are probably further along than many other churches in making the archives accessible," Duffy said, "but I think we will make real progress during the next triennium."
The archives' board will ask General Convention to support the drive toward improving its electronic information resources and preservation effort.
An important step, Duffy said, will be taken during June, when the archives go online to allow anyone to search the records for resolutions from previous general conventions.
A third resolution will ask that the archives officially become "a central registry and place of deposit for the national church's published and printed resources." The resolution also urges dioceses to deposit copies of their periodicals and other publications.
Duffy noted that a larger space would allow the archives to work more with dioceses and parishes to document and preserve the church's local stories.
"It's important to address this," Duffy said of the archives' future. "So much of our faith is built on text, on narrative, telling us where we've been. This isn't just an old, past thing -- it's a way of telling new stories."