The North Carolina Baptist Historical Collection had another productive year for 2025. Among its activities were the following:

Access:

Marcia Phillips, our PT Metadata Technician (former member of the Baptist State Convention of NC History Committee/Coordinator of the Davie Co. Public Library Martin-Wall Local History Room) reviewed and updated 1,598 metadata records for the CLIR-funded Recordings at Risk Grant. The recordings document the American evangelical movement and contain presentations by prominent Southern Baptist pastors and church representatives at evangelical conferences and annual meetings of the Baptist Station Convention of North Carolina.

Digitizing Baptist files:

After 7 years, SCA completed digitizing the NC Baptist Church and Association files completing 12,143 pages in 2024. The total number of the collection (2017-2024) included scanning 89,239 items for 193 boxes in total. Special thanks are due to our Digital Collections Librarian, Melde Rutledge, our SCA student assistants, Beth Tedford (Cataloging Assistant), for completing this work and to Stephanie Bennett, Alayna Veasey, and student employees for moving the boxes off-site.

In addition, WFU worked with Backstage to digitize 8 reels of microfilm for the Hanging Dog, Murfreesboro, Franklinton, Cartledge Creek/Ayers Family, and Bethel Hill Baptist Churches. The Digitization Lab began scanning the records of the Wake Forest Baptist Church (Wake Forest University/Winston-Salem) and completed 8,676 pages. The church, which closed in 2022, donated funds for the digitizing of their collection.

SCA also began digitizing the Wayne Oates Papers, in collaboration with the University of Louisville. The collection is available via Quartex.

Processing, Reference, and Outreach:

During 2025, we accessioned accretions and collections (13) for the Baptist Historical Collection of North Carolina and received numerous publications for addition to our collection of monographs and serials.

We responded to 208 research requests/visitors for our Baptist collections. A special thank you to Public Services Archivist Rebecca Petersen May, Processing and Reference Assistant Emily Houlditch, and Volunteer Shannon Bothwell (past chair of ZSR Library’s Board of Visitors) for answering many of these reference requests.

Tanya Zanish-Belcher, Director-Special Collections & Archives, Wake Forest University