$90,000 Grant to Lehigh Facilitates Access to Moravian
“Hidden Collections”
Lehigh University, in
partnership with the Moravian Archives, has been awarded a
$90,000 grant under the Cataloging Hidden Special
Collections and Archives Program funded by the Mellon
Foundation. This two-year collaborative project, “The
Moravian Community in the New World: The First Hundred
Years,” will process collections documenting the material
culture, religious values and cultural diversity of the
Moravian community of Bethlehem from its founding in 1741
until the opening of the community to non-Moravians in 1844
and the subsequent incorporation of Bethlehem in 1851.
|
Click to Enlarge
Bethlehem Map |
Pictured here (left) is
an example of one item from the Archives: a 1758 map of
Bethlehem produced by Philipp Christian Gottlieb Reuter, a
Moravian surveyor who was an early settler in North Carolina
and mapped various locations.
Lois Fischer Black,
Curator of Special Collections, will serve as the project’s
principal investigator and Paul Peucker, Archivist of the
Northern Province of the Moravian Church, will serve as
project manager.
Lehigh University’s
proven leadership in innovative applications of library and
educational technology will undergird a project that offers
new opportunities for advanced students to become actively
involved in the processing and use of primary documents.
The project will highlight many historically significant
collections held by the Moravian Archives, advancing its
mission of serving as the primary resource center for
Moravian history in North America.
The collections to be
cataloged reflect the multi-faceted life of Moravian
Bethlehem, a transatlantic community in its interaction with
other cultures. Because the church controlled every aspect
of life within Bethlehem, matters were recorded in order to
be reported to church leadership; matters that in other
communities went unrecorded.
Included are personal
papers of artists, tradesmen, missionaries, and sailors,
along with business records and the 2,000 volume
congregational library. In addition, approximately 800 maps
and architectural drawings showing the earliest
documentation of European settlement in Pennsylvania will be
included in this project.
Created in 2008, the
Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives awards
program supports the identification and cataloging of
special collections and archives of high scholarly value
that are difficult or impossible to locate.
It is administered by the
Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) in
Washington D.C. Award recipients create descriptive
information for their hidden collections that will
eventually be linked to and interoperable with all other
projects funded by this grant program.
This year grants were
awarded to thirteen other institutions including the Free
Library of Philadelphia, the Smithsonian, the University of
California at Berkeley, and Yale University.
The Council on Library
and Information Resources is an independent, nonprofit
organization dedicated to improving the management of
information for research, teaching, and learning. CLIR works
to expand access to information, however recorded and
preserved, as a public good.
For more information,
contact Curator Lois Fischer Black (lob206@lehigh.edu
or 610-758-5185) or connect to relevant websites:
--Susan A. Cady
LTS Director for Administrative and Planning Services
Article posted February,
2010
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