Digital Resources for the Study of Religion—Internet Downloads

Many of us look to the future with hope and anticipation for the time when the Internet will make available in digital form the universal, instant, and free access of all the human knowledge, culture, literature, art, and music that is now contained in books and print publications. Imagine what it would be like to be able to pull up on your own computer any book, hymnal, article, map, historic document, or great painting ever published!

The Cooperative Digital Resources Initiative (CDRI)of the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) and Association of Theological Schools is a step in that direction. The CDRI continues to add to its huge repository of digital resources, with a large group of digital items scheduled to be added in its phase four expansion in 2006.

Funded by a generous grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, the CDRI brings together a host of different types of digital resources available for the study of religion: woodcuts, photographs, slides, papyri, coins, maps, manuscripts, lithographs, sermons, letters and correspondence, shape-note tune books, art images, iconography, and texts.

Of particular interest to United Methodist musicians and others might be this item from the Drew University Methodist Library: "Wesley Family Letters and Manuscripts": "Digital images of manuscripts written by members of the Wesley family. The majority of these are letters, but also included are hymns and poems, a sermon by John Wesley, a petition, Thomas Coke's ordination certificate, the will of Charles Wesley's daughter Sarah, and some of the few surviving copies of minutes from the Irish conferences of 1778, 1784, and 1785."

Just a few of the others include:

• Bridwell Library, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University
  "Wesley Manuscripts & Memorabilia":Holographic letters of John Wesley and manuscripts from other members of the Wesley family. Images of items related to Wesley and the Methodist movement, including portraits, book illustrations, images of historic Wesleyan sites, and images of Wesley memorabilia, such as ceramics. Together these resources offer unique insights into Wesley and the "People Called Methodist" for students and scholars at all levels.
• Kathryn Sullivan Bowld Music Library, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
  "Shape-note tune books": The shape-note tune books of the collection illuminate various musical aspects of the American history of church and society, including the singing school movement and the music education movement. Presenting a rich source of American musical life, the seven selected tune books for the digitizing project include psalm and hymn tunes, fuging tunes, songs for Sunday schools, public schools, and homes, as well as music of the Lowell Mason school, children's songs, folk hymns, anthems and music with secular texts.
• United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities/Arthur Merrill Collection
  "Images of the Holy Land":Images from slides taken by Dr. Arthur L. Merrill, Emeritus Harry C. Piper Professor of Biblical Interpretation, during numerous trips to the Holy Land and surrounding areas from 1962 to 1996. The collection includes photographs of the land, archaeological sites and tells, artifacts, holy sites, and modern cultural, political, and religious scenes from Israel and Palestine. The artifacts and archaeological sites that Merrill has captured date from 10,000 BCE to modern times, with a focus on the biblical era.

And there is so much more now available and still to come.