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Protestant Missions Collections
Past, Present, and Future
Christopher Anderson, Yale Divinity Library
Matthew Baker, Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary
Brian Shetler, Drew University Library

PANEL SUMMARY

Collections documenting the history of Protestant missions are of 
great and ongoing interest to a wide range of researchers. Global 
in scope, they capture histories and perspectives often not other-
wise available and support learning and scholarship in disciplines 
such as history, anthropology, and religious studies. Yale Divinity 
Library’s Day Missions Collection, the Burke Library at Union Theo-
logical Seminary’s Missionary Research Library, and Drew Univer-
sity Library’s Methodist Missions Collections together comprise a 
significant amount of primary source material documenting this 
history. The three collections have related but distinct provenance 
and there continue to be new acquisitions that are processed and 
made available for researchers and students. The panel included 
curators and managers of these collections and considered the back-
ground, current uses, and future possibilities of missions-related 
collections within and beyond the fields of religion and theology. 

The three main themes addressed were a) provenance, b) current 
uses, and c) future directions for collecting and research. Anderson, 
Baker, and Shetler each offered a brief sketch of how the collections 
arrived in their current repositories, were processed and made avail-
able over approximately 150 years, and how their provenance, and 
the significant cultural, intellectual, and institutional changes over 
that period, has impacted the collection (e.g., for preservation or 
description issues). The presenters then described some of the uses 
to which these collections had been put for instruction, outreach, and 
programming, offering specific examples from the contexts of Yale 
Divinity School, Columbia University and Union Theological Semi-
nary, and Drew University. Finally, they reflected on recent examples 
and approaches to collection building in the current market and 



130  AT L A 2020 PROCEEDINGS

on a range of projects and research programs that have integrated 
missionary materials.

This panel addressed librarians, students, and scholars working 
with theological, religious studies, or related collections and institu-
tions, particularly where the documentation and study of colonial 
legacies is a primary concern for researchers, faculty, and students. 
It emphasized the need for critical engagement—for instruction, 
management, outreach—with complex and high-interest primary 
sources.