For people who’ve grown tired of traveling to a library to flip through heavy bound volumes of material or read microfilm to finish their research on North Carolina Baptist history, many of the older issues of the Biblical Recorder now can be found online with the simple click of a button.
In 2010, Wake Forest University Archives at Z. Smith Reynolds Library began a project to digitize issues of the Biblical Recorder that were printed from 1834 to 1970. The collection includes issues from the publication’s first year when the title of the publication was North Carolina Baptist Interpreter. The effort wrapped up in June.
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The issues now can be found online with a keyword search or by typing in specific date information at recorder.zsr.wfu.edu.
The project was supported by a $75,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the federal Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources.
Past issues of the Biblical Recorder are one of the library’s “most used resources,” said Vicki Johnson, archives librarian. People have often traveled there to read through old issues to research family history and learn more about North Carolina Baptist heritage.
“My co-workers and I are extremely excited about this resource being available online now knowing how many people consult the Biblical Recorder,” Johnson said. “There have been many times that a patron couldn’t travel to us in order to use the microfilm. Happily, we can now refer them to the issues online and they can use it wherever they are. “Our goal is to make it available to as many people as possible.”
With a future grant or financial gift, additional issues could be posted online, Johnson said. “There is still a good 40 years (remaining),” Johnson said. “We hope to find additional funding in the future to have the remaining years digitized so they will all be available online.”
“Hopefully we can find a way to make that happen,” she said.
Contact Johnson at (336) 758-5089 or at [email protected].