As I write my second entry as an intern of the Burke Library, I am struck by the great contrast between this day and my first day in January. In time for a number of faiths’ holidays, New York has at long last emerged from a long winter and spring has arrived. And, thanks to […]
#LoveInAction
I am happy to announce the official launch of the #LoveInAction website. This site was created to capture and celebrate the tremendous amount of work that Union students and community have done and have been doing that echo Cornel West’s infamous words: “Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.” Union students […]
Charles Augustus Briggs
A common reaction to the name of Charles Augustus Briggs is – “Wasn’t he the heretic?” The answer should be “Yes, but that’s not the whole story.” A brief look at the life of Briggs and his astonishingly cultured and supportive family reveals some unexpected insights. Charles Briggs was born in New York in […]
The Hidden Archival Collections of the Burke Library: A Success Story
It is hard to believe I am writing this, but… I am proud to announce that the Henry Luce Foundation-funded project to process the archives of the Missionary Research Library (MRL) and the William Adams Brown Ecumenical Library (WAB) has reached a successful conclusion!!! From August 2011-December 2014, I, with the help of a team […]
Starting my Internship at the Burke Library at UTS
Greetings! I am excited to start my internship at The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary and begin what looks to be an exciting, interesting, and educational journey into the world of archives and librarianship. After a whirlwind few weeks of applying and interviewing for several internships, I finally decided the Burke Library as the […]
Puritans and Radicals
In 1588-89 a series of seven tracts [1] were published in England on a secret, mobile printing press, aggressively and colorfully attacking the hierarchy of the established church of England in favor of the more minimal, localized Presbyterian form of church government; the first of these, often referred to simply as the Epistle, contains, according […]
First Days Interning at the Burke
As a new intern at the Burke Library, I have been asked to write a brief blog entry about my first impressions and expectations for the semester. I began my first day two weeks ago with a great sense of anticipation – it’s pretty exciting to be getting up to go exactly where you want […]
Cataloging Our Syriac Manuscripts
I took one class on Syriac while I was a student at Union and I was immediately in love. It combined the structure of a semitic language with seriously fascinating theology and had the added bonus of being relatively obscure. If there’s anything I love, it’s languages few people have any use for. Imagine my […]
More Than Women’s Work
There is something rather intimate about sorting through, preserving and arranging another person’s papers. I came to know Letty Russell in a more personal way, handling papers that she herself handled. I not only worked through a myriad of syllabi related to her time as a professor at Yale Divinity School, but also Letty’s own […]
Nobody Expects . . .*
When you walk into the Burke Library and look through the book and periodical stacks and the reading room reference shelves, you probably feel that you know what is here. However, have you heard about the library’s “so-called” hidden collections? The archives in the Burke Library contain 350 collections of unique documents and artifacts which […]