Archives and Documentation Centres with Christian Mission interests

• Africa in German Mission Archives

• Africa Research Central

• ARANZ - Archives and Records Association of New Zealand

• Archive and Library of the Church of Jesus Christ Madagascar (2004 Conference)

  The archives of the Malagasy Protestant churches contains precious documents, books and pictures from the former missions working in Madagascar, especially in the 19^th century. The existence of these archives is very important, as the history of Madagascar is closely related to the history of Malagasy churches.  

  The National Archives of FJKM have London Missionary Society (LMS), Friends Foreign Mission Association (FFMA) and Paris Missionary Society (PMS) documents, which are the oldest archives of missionary working in Madagascar. They include board minutes, committee minutes, station account books, copies of memorials from the Society to governments, correspondence (official and personal), and diaries kept by missionaries in the field.

  The archives also contain:

  ·    the records of the foundation of the Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar (FJKM) in 1968, general synod reports, correspondence with incoming and outgoing letters, documents from schools, evangelisation, churches departments LMS microfiches (1818-1940).

  ·    old scenery photos (19^th century), missionaries photos (almost all missionaries working in Madagascar between 1861-1941) and commemorative church pictures.

  ·    5000 printed books and periodicals edited from 1835-1960 with mission, educational and Madagascar section. 

• Archival Spirit April 2003 (includes report of Rome Conference 2002)
• Association of Protestant Church Archives in Germany
• ATLA Cooperative Digital Resources for the Study of Religion
• Australian Society of Archivists, Religious Collections Special Interest Group.
• Basel Mission Picture Archive
• Billy Graham Center Archives including Consultation on Nondenominational Mission Archives November  2001, and Its Your History: Guidelines for Establishing Your Mission Archives.

  The Billy Graham Center Archives specialize in unpublished information that tells the story of North American Protestant non-denominational missions and evangelistic activities through the years.  The archives contains four kinds of Protestant nondenominational records:

   ·     Records of American evangelists and evangelistic organisations, with information on people like:    Billy Graham, Billy Sunday, William Biederwolf, Tom Skinner, John Wilbur Chapman, Charles Finney, Henry W. Stough, John Perkins, and Mel Trotter.

   ·     Records of faith or independent mission boards and churches, mission service organisations, and other institutions, like: Youth for Christ, Africa Inland Mission, World Evangelical Fellowship Gospel Recordings, InterVarsity, Latin America Mission, China Inland Mission, and Mission Aviation Fellowship.

   ·     Records of significant evangelical seminars and conferences, like: Wheaton Congress on the Church's Worldwide Mission (1966), International Congress on World Evangelization (1974), Evangelicals for Social Action, World Communications Congress (1970), and Consultation on World Evangelization.

   ·     Records of individual Christian workers, clergy and laypeople, including personal papers and tapes or oral history interviews, with information on people like: Hudson Taylor, Donald McGavran, Jim Elliot, Gordon Lindsay, William Booth, John and Betty Stam,   J. Herbert and Winnifred Mary Kane, Jonathan and Rosalind Goforth, and Corrie Ten Boom.

• Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples Congregazione per l'Evangelisazione dei Popoli  Arch.storico@evangel.va 06698 71523, Don Luis Manuel Cuna Ramos - archivist. See also Agenzia Fides
   

• DEFAP-Service Protestant de Mission

  DEFAP is the service of mission of the Protestant Churches of France. It originates in the SMEP (Company of the Évangéliques Missions of Paris) company, an international and interdenominational Protestant missionary organisation founded in 1822. This company was replaced in 1971 by a community of Churches (the CEVAA) located in Africa, Latin America, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific; and by a missionary department (the DEFAP). The DEFAP and the CEVAA inherited and make alive this long missionary history by associating evangelization, the fight against slavery, promotion of the rights of man, education, health, development, decolonization and democracy …etc. In bond with the Churches partners, the authorities and the host countries, the DEFAP ensures the reception, selection and follow-up of Co-operators and Volunteers of International Solidarity. In accordance with the need and the requests of its partners, the DEFAP prepares, organizes and accompanies by the formations in France and takes part in the realization of various programs (education-formation, social action, work near the refugees, etc.).

  In it’s library and resource centre, DEFAP shelters, manages and animates a library of almost 20,000 works, a resource centre, a photographic library, and other files, thus offering a place of memory for the history of mission and the tools of the present.

• Ecclesiastical fonds in Swiss archives

• ERPANET Project Digital Preservation.

• Harold Turner Collection, University of Birmingham

• International Council on Archives

• MIKADO Mission Library and Catholic Documentation Centre, Germany
  The library and documentation centre of the „Internationales Katholisches Missionswerk missio e.V.“ and the Institute of Missiology Missio e.V. and the mission library of the Jesuits have important global resources relating to mission, art, and contextual theology.

• MUNDUS Gateway to Missionary Collections in the UK

• Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, Australia

• Pentecostal Research Centers and Archives

• Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church

• Presbyterian Church Archives of Aotearoa New Zealand

  The material held in the Presbyterian Archives tells the story of the history of Presbyterian Church in Aotearoa New Zealand.  It includes material from The General Assembly, General Assembly Committees, Foreign Home & Maori Missions, Local & National Presbyterian Women's & Youth organisations, Parishes and Presbyteries in Otago & Southland, Knox College & Theological Hall, Synod of Otago & Southland, Otago Foundation Trust Board & the personal papers of Ministers and prominent Presbyterian Laymen & Women from throughout the Country. Also held is a large collection of Photographs, Cine film, Slides, Audio/Video tapes & Plans.

• School of Oriental and African Studies Archives

  SOAS Library holds an important and expanding collection of archives and manuscripts relating to Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Two thirds of these comprise archives and papers documenting the activities of a number of major British missionary societies, and of individual missionaries, making SOAS the leading centre in the United Kingdom for mission studies. Collections from individuals include Gladys Aylward, missionary in China; and Patrick Devereux Coates, who was with the consular service in China.  Collections from religious institutions include the China Inland Mission, the Council for World Mission, the Methodist Missionary Society, the Conference of British Missionary Societies and Christian Aid.  There are significant holdings of business archives, a substantial number of collections relating to East Asia, rich African language and literature holdings and an immense range of manuscripts and scholarly papers relating to East Asia, South and South East Asia and the Pacific.

   

• SEDOS

• UNESCO Archives Portal

• Vatican Archives Vatican Library

The Vatican Library is posting hundreds of thousands of historical manuscripts on its Web page. Manuscripts of Emperor Justinian, love letters of King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, and missives of Lucrezia Borgia to her father, who had become Pope Alexander VI -- all may be consulted at the Apostolic Library, fully accessible to the public.

Since 2000, projects have been under way to digitize and catalogue descriptions of the graphic material (prints, illustrations and drawings) of the Print Library and the numismatic material (coins and medals) of the Numismatic Library. The database offers a public catalogue which contains descriptions of books and magazines, prints, illustrations, drawings, copper engravings, photographs, coins and medals and even musical scores, recordings and CDs, for a total of 700,000 bibliographic entries.

The Vatican Apostolic Library, founded by Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455), is specialized in humanistic areas (paleography, history, art history, classics, philology) and has 1.6 million ancient and modern printed volumes; 83,000 incunabula (editions printed from the invention of the press to the start of the 16th century), 150,000 manuscripts and archive volumes; 300,000 coins and medals, and more than 100,000 prints.

• Yale Divinity School Archives http://www.library.yale.edu/div/divhome.htm

Yale Divinity Library's collections, documenting the history, thought, and life of Christianity, are world-renowned and have a strong emphasis on the documentation of Protestant mission activity. The extensive holdings of printed works in the Day Missions Library are complemented by the personal papers of more than 300 missionaries and archives of numerous mission-sending agencies.

Nearly half of the manuscript and archival holdings of the Divinity Library document the missionary enterprise in China. This reflects the impact of the China Records Project, which was begun in 1968 by the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. and became part of the Divinity Library in 1972. Thousands of former China missionaries and their families were contacted through this project. In many cases the material sent to the library in response to China Records Project contact was small in quantity, but this guide lists China-related material regardless of quantity because taken as a whole this documentation represents the nation's largest consolidated record of Protestant mission activity in China.  Archival and manuscript holdings are complemented by collections of pamphlets, hymnals, and missionary Bibles.

Resources

• Rescuing the Memory of our Peoples Archives Manual

• Anglican Library Society - support and humour for librarians

• Conseil Canadien des Archives Le sauvetage des fonds et des collections d'archives endommagés par l'eau, de Betty Walsh (format PDF) et Numérisation et archives (format PDF)