As part of an ongoing series of posts, we’re highlighting different collections and items from the Moravian Archives, Bethlehem. Check out our earlier posts in this series at https://www.moravianchurcharchives.org/digital-access/.

This month we would like to take a break from looking at individual items and collections and highlight a different topic, specifically a few of the other institutions and projects we have collaborated with to make digitized materials more readily accessible. The following is only a limited selection of examples, a full list can be found on our website under “Digital Resources” and these materials can also be accessed through our online finding aid here.

One example of this is “Archiving Antigua: A Digital Record of Pre- and Post-Emancipation Antigua, 1760-1948,” a project for which we digitized a variety of material related to the Moravian Church in Antigua, including membership catalogs, maps, and photographs. These are available as part of the Digital Library of the Caribbean, a multi-institutional, international digital library that brings together a wide range of digitized materials related to the history of the region from more than seventy institutions, and our contributions can be found here.

A further example is “Uncommon Bonds: Labrador Inuit and Moravian Missionaries,” a project we are involved with alongside the Nunatsiavut Government, Moravian Church in Newfoundland, Labrador, Memorial University Libraries and the National Heritage Digitization Strategy. The goal of this project is to increase access to more than 60,000 pages from our holdings that comprise a wide range of records pertaining to Moravian missions among Labrador Inuit. The website of the project can be found here.

Another institution we have worked with is the Saxon State and University Library (SLUB) in Dresden, Germany, which is both the library of Saxony and of the Dresden University of Technology. Alongside their large collection of books and manuscripts SLUB also provides access to extensive digitized materials and in partnership with them we have digitized a selection of 18th century materials, including three books by David Zeisberger on the language of the Onondaga people, one of the initial five tribes that formed the Iroquois Confederacy, and a number of manuscript diaries kept by Moravian missionaries working or traveling throughout northeastern North America. These can be accessed on the SLUB website here.

We are proud of our involvement with these projects and are excited for continuing and new opportunities to collaborate with other institutions and projects.