With NEH funding, the Princeton Theological Seminary Library is creating a plan to preserve its extensive collection documenting world religious history. Image courtesy of Princeton Theological Seminary Library.
The Princeton Theological Seminary Library holds an extensive collection of religious texts, with a special focus on the history of American religious traditions and the Presbyterian and Reformed churches. In addition to a large collection of books and journals, the library’s Special Collections hold more than 75,000 items, including Cuneiform tablets, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Hebrew scrolls, Syriac manuscripts, and more than 5,000 works of Puritan and Nonconformist literature dating to the 17th century. During construction of the library’s new building, much of the library’s collections were stored off-site for several years. Now, after a major renovation to its facilities, and its collection all in one place, the library is taking steps to ensure its materials are broadly accessible—in addition to being used by seminary students and researchers, the collections are used by many local pastors and interdisciplinary scholars from around the world. With NEH support, the Princeton Theological Seminary Library is establishing a preservation plan to ensure that it is able to care for its collection and ensure it remains accessible to the public and scholarly community now and in the future.
