Jun 26, 2019
Rev. Nicholas J. Kersten
Director of Education and History
The Council on History met in Janesville, WI, at the SDB Center the weekend of May 4-5, 2019. Council members Janet Thorngate (chair), Judy Parrish, Kim Merchant, Tim Lawton, and Elon Sinclair, as well as consultant Elizabeth Camenga and Director Nick Kersten, met to evaluate and organize the work of SDB preservation and communication over the past year, to assess progress on goals, and to make new goals related to the vision of the Council: “to remember our past to inform the present and envision the future.”
The Council considered…
• The progress in our recent digitization projects and our progress on digitizing library holdings moving forward. Digital versions of the Sabbath Recorder are already available at www.sdbhistory.org. Digital versions of other SDB publications, including General Conference Yearbooks, the Protestant Sentinel, the SDB Register, and other publications will be added to the website after successfully scanning since last year’s General Conference sessions. We also made plans for the scanning of additional materials moving forward which will also be added to wour website.
• The progress in our volunteer project to connect our various indexes to our online searchable library database. Kim Merchant, our manager for this project, reported incredible progress in the project based on the work being accomplished by many volunteers. Based on this, we are moving into a new stage of the project sooner than anticipated. When completed, this project will lead to all our surname and church indexes being searchable in a single database, as opposed to the several systems required to search for material now.
• Plans for General Conference, including the nature of our Conference presentation, the honoring of a new recipient of the Gold-Headed Cane Award, and the sale of Council publications at General Conference.
• The current state of our website, including plans to continue to build and add to the material there, even as we anticipate needing to redesign the website within a few years.
• The progress in our deaccessioning project, which is helping to alleviate space concerns at the library by removing material which does not fit the scope or purpose of our collection. We aim to have the material being removed from our collection in its new home by the end of the year, freeing space for more important materials.
• The sabbatical of Director Kersten, and its effect on the work of the Council. Because of the good work of many volunteers and staff people, happily Nick was able to take a sabbatical without our work stalling out or losing momentum.
• Our planning for the upcoming 350th anniversary of the founding of the Newport Seventh Day Baptist church in Newport, RI, in 1671. Plans are being made to produce new material to promote this important anniversary. The possibility of some sort of service in Newport at the SDB Meetinghouse in commemoration of the occasion is also being explored.
• Our reference assistance work and the requests which we have responded to in the last year.
• Voting on the induction of new patrons to the supporter group of our Library. Patrons are recognized on a gift of $250 dollars or more to the Library and its preservation.
Other opportunities to seek partners and contributions to our work were also considered.
• Changes to our policies after recent review processes.
• The work of library assistant, Rinald Kersten, (including significant progress on the preservation and cataloging of our extensive and unwieldy photo collection!) and genealogy volunteer, Gay McRoberts, (who is doing an excellent job in aiding those seeking genealogical information from the collection!).
• How we can aid local churches in the preservation of their history, including church records and other important documents and artifacts. Plans continue to deliver a survey to local churches before the end of the year to evaluate the depth of the need in local churches for assistance and/or training in this important work.
We are grateful for the support of SDBs throughout the past year and look forward to continuing in our work as we do our part to actively advance God’s kingdom.