Nov 26, 2019
Rev. Nicholas J. Kersten
Director of Education and History
Readers of the print version of the Sabbath Recorder should already have received in their mailbox our most recent edition of History Happenings, our newsletter for history updates for the past several years. If you haven’t had a chance to read that mailer yet, you should check it out, as it includes…
• Updates on the digitization of our library
• A tribute to our most recent Gold-Headed Cane Award winner, Rev. Andrew Samuels
• A list of resources we are seeking to add to our collection by donation
• A special offer for the purchase of Janet Thorngate’s Newport book
• An opportunity to contribute financially to the work of history preservation of Seventh Day Baptists
• News about a church records preservation survey we have just sent to member churches of the SDB General Conference.
This final item merits further discussion.
When the Historical Committee of our General Conference (which preceded the Historical Society) was formed, one of their main concerns was for the preservation of records of local SDB congregations. There was concern that significant records were being lost or destroyed. They wanted to sound the caution of preservation, volunteering to aid local churches in the work of saving their records.
The methods have changed and we have access to preservation technology that first committee could never have dreamed of. The Council on History remains concerned that this same technological change may present a present crisis for our contemporary church records. While paper records are easy enough to destroy, it takes something active—water, fire, mold, etc. to destroy them. If the records of a local church are kept on a computer’s hard drive, it doesn’t always take an active thing to see them destroyed. The simple and passive phasing out of a computer in the church office is sometimes all it takes to erase the records of a church—and that’s before we consider power surges, failed hard drives or thumb drives, or other digital demons!
For this reason, the Council on History is asking churches to fill out the survey we have already sent (it should’ve arrived in early November), so that we can understand better the needs of local churches in record preservation—so we can generate the appropriate resources. It is our hope that every member church will fill out the survey by the end of the year and return it to us so that we can evaluate the data and then work to aid churches by whatever means possible. In addition, we aim to tabulate and report the results if enough of the surveys are returned.
If you are participating in a local SDB church, please help us by insuring that the survey is completed and returned!
If you would like to see either History Happenings or the survey online, you can find them on the Conference’s website (where they will be highlighted in blog posts) or on the SDB Historical Library and Archives website (www.sdbhistory.org).
