the billy graham center: special collections for public use

ferne lauraine weimer
director
billy graham center library
wheaton college
wheaton, Illinois

What does a sixth grade parochial school student have in common with a graduate student in mission studies, or the editor-in-chief of the scholarly journal Anthropos with a missionary on study leave? Each has been a patron of the Billy Graham Center Library at Wheaton College, an interdenominational Christian liberal arts college situated twenty-five miles west of Chicago.

The Billy Graham Center, a division of the college, is dedicated to the study and promotion of world evangelization. The concept for such a center originated in the early 1970s when evangelist Billy Graham and his associates in the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) expressed a need for a repository of their papers and records. They also wanted to encourage other Christian leaders to develop more effective strategies and skills for communicating the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Plans for the center included three departments for collecting materials on evangelistic work and mission studies plus several continuing education programs which address issues of vital interest to the church. The archives, the museum, and the library provide resources for summer workshops on preaching and evangelistic strategies for local congregations and for special institutes such as the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals or the Institute of Chinese Studies.

Early operational funding and the building which houses these activities and the graduate programs of Wheaton College were provided through the BGEA. Current operational funding comes from three main sources: endowment income, foundation grants, and donations by individuals.

The Archives

The archives of the center collects unpublished materials — correspondence, diaries, book and sermon manuscripts, maps, photographs, slides, audio and video tapes, etc., — which document Protestant nondenominational evangelistic and missionary efforts in America or by North Americans. More detailed information on the archival collections is available from an article by the archivist, Robert Shuster, in Illinois Libraries (April 1981). The general categories of resources include:

1.  Records of American evangelists and evangelistic organizations, including Billy Graham and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association:

2.  Records of faith or independent mission boards and mission service organizations;

3.  Records of individual missionaries including personal papers and tapes of oral history interviews;

4.  Records of significant evangelical seminars, conferences, and congresses.

Most of these collections are unrestricted. Researchers select and use materials in the Archives Reading Room on the third floor of the center which is open 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 8:00 a.m. to Noon, Saturday, except for holidays. The address is: The Archives of the Billy Graham Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois 60187. The telephone number is: 312-260-5910.

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The Museum

The museum develops and maintains exhibits which highlight major events in American Protestant evangelism from colonial times to the present. These range from the work of John Eliot (1604-1690), "apostle to the Indians," to the Great Awakening, from camp meetings to the evangelistic work of Dwight L. Moody or Billy Sunday. One section depicts the career of Billy Graham and various divisions of the BGEA, such as Decision magazine and World Wide Pictures. Another portion portrays the meaning of the Christian gospel. In order to support both permanent and temporary exhibits, the museum acquires published and unpublished books, pamphlets, tracts, broadsides, posters, prints, photographs, etc., for use as artifacts.

Some examples of print items include: a page from Eliot's Indian Bible of 1663, a copy of the Parliamentary Act of 1649 which established the first Protestant missionary society, and a rare 1704 bookplate of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign parts. Artistic works depict camp meeting scenes and early circuit-riding preachers. Of the 785 items in the Gast Collection of American religious lithographs, over 40 percent are by the famed establishments of N. Currier and Currier and Ives.

Museum collections may be viewed by appointment only. The public exhibits are displayed on the first floor of the center from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., daily except Friday, 1:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., and Sunday, 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. The current temporary exhibit, Images of American Christianity, is open through May. For more information, please write or call: 312-260-5909.

The Library

The library is the largest department and provides the broadest resource base of published materials, both historical and contemporary, for the study of evangelistic work, revival, and cross-cultural missionary activity. To undergird work in these areas, the library maintains a basic theological reference collection containing concordances, critical commentaries, biblical language tools, and denominational encyclopedias. The Church Fathers are available in the original languages and in English translation.

Selected country surveys and bibliographies on a variety of topics are intended to direct researchers to other resources on and off campus.

The core collection of materials on evangelism was acquired in late 1975 from a private collector, Richard Owen Roberts, who served as director until 1979. Primary sources are represented by published works from the pens of evangelists, among which are doctrinal essays and sermons, correspondence, memoirs, autobiographies, and devotional literture. Secondary works include: biographies, works treating particular evangelistic movements or specific periods of revival, and select denominational histories. A tertiary category is methodological studies which relate the "how-to" of personal, mass, or media evangelism. Miscellaneous smaller categories are: psychology of conversion, hymns associated with evangelistic campaigns, training manuals for lay workers, and books written for new converts.

The Early American Imprints microcard collection is a significant addition to this collection. The Readex Microprint company in cooperation with the American Antiquarian Society has attempted to produce all books printed in America between 1649 and 1819. Items are indexed in the bibliographies by Charles Evans and Shaw-Shoemaker. A wealth of information for the study of church history as well as the general history of America is contained in these series.

The world mission collection is comprised of historical, sociocultural, and theological materials pertaining to evangelism across cultural boundaries. Among historical works are those which deal wholly or in part with the history of Christian missions, especially by mission societies and denominational agencies, missions to a particular locale or people, autobiographies, biographies, memoirs, and correspondence of missionaries and mission leaders. The collection is strongest in nineteenth and twentieth century works, but some effort has been made to collect source material for earlier Gospel efforts. The Celtic Church, flourishing in Great Britain and Ireland prior to the advent of the Roman missions of St. Augustine in 596-597, was remarkable for its missionary ardor. The library owns a facsimile reproduction of The Book of Kells, a finely ornamented manuscript of the Gospels.

To keep abreast of current activities and research, the library receives about four hundred periodicals. These range from newsletters of evangelists, study centers, and special interest groups to magazines from Protestant nondenominational mission boards and parachurch organizations (Youth for Christ, Campus Crusade for Christ, etc.). Theological and missiological journals from the Third World stand side-by-side with those from professional societies in church history, biblical studies, and missions. The evangelical perspective of Billy Graham and Wheaton College receives greater emphasis in the selection process than either a denominational or ecumenical view.

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Current holdings include: 53,000 monographs, 7,000 equivalent periodical volumes, and over 100,000 microform units. Seven hundred to one thousand items are added each year.

The Patrons

The typical library user is a graduate student working on a master's degree in cross-cultural communication or church history. In addition to materials mentioned earlier, a student will find religious periodical indexes (The Christian Periodical Index and Religion Index One) plus specialized tools. In cross-cultural missions, one may examine the bibliographies in Missionalia and Bibliografia Missionaria. Another may find A Critical Bibliogrphy of Religion in America by Nelson Burr and American Religion and Philosophy: A Guide to Information Sources by Ernest R. Sandeen and Frederick Hale most useful.

Also common during certain weeks of a term is the activity of undergraduate history majors doing primary source research exercises. They must find and describe: the first antislavery tract published in America (source: Early American Imprints), the minutes of the Sons of Temperance meetings in Dexter, Michigan, 1848-1851 (source: Temperance and Prohibition Papers), or six months of the 1868 Chinese Recorder, a missionary magazine.

Sixth graders from a local Christian grammar school were required to write class reports on individual countries which included a section on missionary activities. The children, usually accompanied by a parent, consulted the Mission Handbook: North American Protestant Ministries Overseas to find names and addresses of mission agencies and associations to contact.

While a number of missionaries studying in the graduate school or at seminaries in the Chicago metropolitan area are frequent users, the working visit of Dr. Louis J. Luzbetak, editor-in-chief of Anthropos: lntemational Review of Ethnology and Linquistics published in Germany, greatly encouraged the library staff in their selection, acquisition, and cataloging of research materials for scholars.

Many others use the library facilities and services. In the fall term of 1983, guest card holders accounted for an average 25 percent of total circulation transactions. Borrowing privileges are extended to all who have an expressed need for the materials. Local pastors come to study away from their offices and telephones. The art department of Christianity Today finds photographs to illustrate feature articles in their publications. The main point is that the library, along with the archives and museum, is open to the general public.

Bibliographic Control

From 1977 to 1982, the library cataloged all materials using a local computer service bureau. Bibliographic data could be retrieved by author, title, series, subject, and added entries. This on-line public access catalog was adequate for patron use, but monthly charges for service became prohibitive. A microfiche catalog replaced the on-line catalog in late 1981. In retrospect, this was a judicious change of plan. The service bureau went into bankruptcy six months later, providing magnetic tapes of the bibliographic data to the library but holding the programs as assets. The college data processing department was able to read the tapes and provide shelflist and authority file print-outs.

Also, the library joined OCLC in 1980 when the staff and materials moved into the Billy Graham Center building from temporary facilities in an industrial warehouse. When the service bureau collapsed, the cataloging department was able to start a card catalog using OCLC.

Interlibrary loan requests to Wheaton College are handled by the Buswell Memorial Library, the main campus library, because both libraries share the ICW symbol on OCLC. All circulating books are available through interlibrary loan; items in the reference, Graham, and rare collections are restricted.

While the Buswell Library belongs to LIBRAS, the Graham Center Library participates in the Chicago Area Theological Library Association (CATLA) and the American Theological Library Association (ATLA). The library will participate in their union lists of serials. The collection development librarian attends meetings of the Acquisitions Task Force of the Chicago Area Theological Schools, a forum for cooperative collection development.

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Public Relations

Publicity for the library takes place at several levels. Some activities and publications are provided directly to users or professional colleagues. Orientation tours are provided for incoming students, bibliographic instruction is designed for specific courses, and pathfinders and resource guides are compiled on topics such as missions research, church leadership, and evangelistic outreach. In 1983 the library and archives held open houses for pastors and lay leaders from churches within a ten-mile radius of Wheaton. Displays of books and audiovisual kits highlighted strengths of the collections. CATLA members and the DuPage librarians have also toured.

Some library promotion takes place at center- or college-sponsored activities. When the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals hosted a colloquium on fundamentalism, library staff assisted in the preparation of a checklist of materials for further study. When the Buswell Library hosted the conference of the Christian Librarians Association in 1983, the Billy Graham Center was a tour option.

Faculty and staff are encouraged to invite professional organizations and learned societies to the center whenever they are meeting in the Chicago area. Thus, the library and archives have co-hosted receptions and tours for groups such as the American Society of Missiology.

Each summer several thousand people attend conferences on the college campus. These may be: the Christian Legal Society, the Christian Writers Institute, or the Association of Church Missions Committees. Brochures, handouts, and displays may be geared for these audiences as well.

Further Information

This synopsis can only highlight some of the materials, services, and activities of the Billy Graham Center Library, Archives, Museum, and programs. For additional information, please address inquiries to: Director, Billy Graham Center Library. Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois 60187. The telephone number is: 312-260-5194. Service hours are: 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Saturday except during holidays.

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