Our latest exhibit: Wesley goes digital

Are You Ready for Your Close-Up, John Wesley? Digitizing a Special Collection Methodist Center Gallery, Fall 2005

On display in this exhibit are a selection of digital images representing items from among nearly 300 Drew-owned manuscripts (at left is a letter from John Wesley to Thomas Rankin, written January 22, 1767). This extensive collection of letters by John and Charles Wesley and other members of the Wesley family was digitized with a $5000 grant from the American Theological Library Association's Cooperative Digital Resources Initiative, Phase Three. The exhibit also includes an explanation of the digitization process. We sometimes think that "everything" is available on the Internet, but have you ever wondered how you create digital images? Or where you store them? How much does it cost? How long does it take? Your questions are about to be answered! Come visit the exhibit in person, or check out our exhibit brochure.

Inclusively covering the period 1719-1887, the Wesley correspondence and poetry shed light not only on the history and development of Methodism, but also life in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain, and are of use to both scholars and religious researchers with interests in Wesley studies and British history. With the support of the Luce Foundation, the ATLA Cooperative Digital Resources Initiative provides a freely available, web-searchable, central repository of digital resources contributed by participating libraries. All the resources in the CDRI database, which include images and text from many centuries of Christian history, are public-domain and available for use in classroom, church, and other settings free of charge.

Also participating in this round of grants were libraries at Princeton, Vanderbilt, Boston University, Andover Newton, Southern Methodist University, Ohio State, and Southwestern Baptist. Visit ATLA's website for more details about the other schools who participated in previous phases, and the resources available in the CDRI database.

Stay tuned: I'll post some more images soon!