Newsline: Brethren Digital Archives project enters Phase 2

[CoBNews <CoBNews@brethren.org>]

Newsline: Church of the Brethren News Service, News Director Cheryl 
Brumbaugh-Cayford, 800-323-8039 ext. 260, cobnews@brethren.org

Brethren Digital Archives project enters Phase 2

(May 7, 2012) Elgin, IL --The Brethren Digital Archives committee met on April 
23 at the Brethren Heritage Center in Brookeville, Ohio. The group is guiding a 
project to digitize Brethren periodicals and publications.

Three different Brethren groups were represented at the meeting: Church of the 
Brethren, Grace Brethren, and Old German Baptist Brethren. The Dunkard Brethren 
are also involved in the project, but unfortunately their representative was 
unable to attend this meeting. In attendance were Terry Barkley, Virginia 
Harness, Larry Heisey, Eric Bradley, Gary Kocheiser, Liz Cutler Gates, Steve 
Bayer, as well as Jeff Bach and Jeanine Wine via conference call.

Periodicals to be scanned for the archive from the Brethren Historical Library 
and Archives (BHLA) in the next phase of the project include "The Brethren's 
Missionary Visitor," "Der Bruderbote," "The Gospel Messenger," and the 
"Progressive Christian." Other periodicals will be scanned from various 
institutions, including Bridgewater (Va.) College and Elizabethtown (Pa.) 
College.

The most extensive undertaking will be "The Gospel Messenger," which is bound 
by year in 82 volumes, many of which are oversized. The group also hopes to 
include the various Brethren almanacs in the digitization project at some point 
in the future.

This is the second phase of periodicals to be digitized. The hope is to scan 
from originals, as in Phase 1, but some periodicals may have to be scanned from 
microfilm.

Check out the publications already available in the online archive at 
http://archive.org/details/brethrendigitalarchives . Periodicals can be read 
online, or downloaded in a variety of forms including PDF. The text is 
searchable, and there is an audio component to hear the text read out loud.

Some funds remain from Phase 1, but additional fundraising efforts will be 
needed to meet the needs of this next phase. The committee plans to meet again 
in March of next year.

The Church of the Brethren is a Christian denomination committed to continuing 
the work of Jesus peacefully and simply, and to living out its faith in 
community. The denomination is based in the Anabaptist and Pietist faith 
traditions and is one of the three Historic Peace Churches. It celebrated its 
300th anniversary in 2008. It counts some 123,000 members across the United 
States and Puerto Rico, and has missions and sister churches in Nigeria, 
Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and India.

(Virginia Harness, archival intern for the Brethren Historical Library and 
Archives at the Church of the Brethren General Offices in Elgin, Ill., provided 
this release.)

># # #

>For more information contact:

>Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford
>Director of News Services
>Church of the Brethren
>1451 Dundee Ave., Elgin, IL 60120
>800-323-8039 ext. 260
>cobnews@brethren.org