Digital Projects Grant Available

ALABI officers are encouraging applications for a small grant to support Baptist digital projects. This is the second year that the digital projects grant will be offered. California Baptist University was awarded the first ALABI digital projects grant of $500 in 2014 to support their work digitizing the California Southern Baptist newspaper. Researchers can now access over 120 issues of the newspaper ranging from 1941-1950 in the California Southern Baptist Convention Digital Archive.

Please consider partnering with ALABI to make some of the important Baptist history resources in your collections accessible online for patrons at ALABI institutions and beyond. Visit the Baptist Heritage website to learn more about the guidelines and complete an grant application. The application deadline is April 1.

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Betty Hurtt Meritorious Service Award Nominations

ALABI officers are accepting nominations for the Betty Hurtt Meritorious Service Award. This award honors a current or former ALABI member or any individual who has served as a role model and contributed significantly to the preservation and promotion of Baptist records and manuscripts. The award includes a plaque and a resolution honoring the individual from the association.

If you would like to nominate someone for this award, please submit a letter of nomination to an ALABI officer by March 20, 2015. Officers include: Laura Botts, president (botts_lm@mercer.edu); Jan Ballard, vice president (jballard@abhsarchives.org); Jennifer Taylor, secretary (jrtaylor@samford.edu); and Bill Sumners, executive secretary/treasurer (bill@sbhla.org).

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2015 ALABI Annual Meeting

Please mark you calendars and begin planning to attend this year’s annual ALABI meeting, April 22-24 at the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives (SBHLA) in Nashville, Tennessee. Our theme will be “Here in the Real World: Understanding and Serving Our Users,” so we’ll be promoting practicality with a twang. Details about lodging, meeting rooms, tours, events, and a finalized program will be coming soon.

ALABI members interested in speaking are encouraged to submit session proposals with a country music song incorporated into the title. So, get in touch if you have been helping genealogists rediscover their “Family Tradition” or connecting with new users who have left saying, “You Had Me at Hello.” Your colleagues would love to learn from your experience. Be creative, have fun, and don’t worry if you can’t think of a song title; the planning committee will be happy to help!

Session proposals should be submitted to Jan Ballard, ALABI Vice President/President Elect at jballard@abhsarchives.org or 678-547-6680. The deadline for ideas and proposals is February 27th.

Hope to see you all in Nashville!

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Position Announcement: Public Services Librarian, The Baptist College of Florida

The Baptist College of Florida currently has an opening for the position of Public Services Librarian.

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ALABI 2011 in Pictures

ALABI members who attended the 2011 meeting were treated to a variety of sights and sounds in Texas. Below are images of the meeting.

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Journal of Religious & Theological Information

Robert Ray, the Assistatnt Editor of the Journal of Religious and Theological Information, has asked that we post the following message for the members of ALABI.


The Journal of Religious & Theological Information, now published by Routledge (a member of the Taylor & Francis Group), is an essential resource for bibliographers, librarians, and scholars interested in the literature of religion and theology as well as digital information in a religious or theological context. Both international and pluralistic in scope, this peer-reviewed journal encourages the publication of research and scholarship in the field of library and information studies as it relates to religious studies and related fields, including philosophy, ethnic studies, anthropology, sociology, and history. By “information” we refer to both print and electronic, and both published and unpublished information. A board of consulting editors assists the editor in reviewing submissions as well as maintaining awareness of developments in the fields covered. JRTI welcomes submissions using various methodologies, including empirical research, essays, and critical reviews.

This journal focuses on various stages in librarianship for religious and theological information, such as:

  • production (including printing and publishing)
  • dissemination
  • use
  • storage
  • retrieval
  • preservation
  • bibliography
  • collection development
  • instruction and information literacy
  • digitization and multimedia
  • special collections and archives
  • history of libraries and librarianship
  • censorship and intellectual freedom

Manuscripts should be submitted to the Editor via email, preferably in Microsoft Word format. Send manuscripts to Mark Stover at mstover@mail.sdsu.edu

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ALABI 2010 Presentation: Library Assessment in Academic Libraries

The ALABI 2010 meeting in Georgetown, Kentucky, was graciously hosted by the staff of Georgetown College. The Anna Ashcraft Ensor Learning Center at Georgetown College is a wonderful facility, and the Mary Margaret Lowe, the Library Director of Georgetown College was a wonderful host.

During the conference, Mary Margaret treated attendees to a presentation entitled “Library Assessment in Academic Libraries.” For those who would like to revisit the information Mary Margaret provided, her PowerPoint presentation is offered below.

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ALABI 2010 Presentation — Cooperative Digitization: Possibilities, Pitfalls, and Prospects

Attendees to the ALABI 2010 meeting had the unique privilege of hearing Eric Ames, Kathy Hilman, and Dr. Doug Weaver, all of Baylor University, make a presentation entitled, “Cooperative Digitization: Possibilities, Pitfalls, and Prospects.” The slides from their presentation are offered below.

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Constitution and Bylaws updated

At the 2009 ALABI meeting in Nashville, ALABI members approved the revised Constitution and Bylaws for the group. Those documents have been available as PDFs on the meetings page, but until now, they have not been available on the Constitution and Bylaws page. The official Constitution and Bylaws page has now been edited to reflect the current edition of the ALABI Constitution and Bylaws. If you plan on attending the meeting in Georgetown this year, you might want to take a few minutes to review them before the meeting.

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2010 ALABI Meeting

The registration form and accommodations information for the 2010 ALABI meeting are now available on the meetings page. The agenda should be released sometime later this week. The following topics will be addressed at this year’s meeting.

Preconference workshop: Records management

Basic digitization techniques

Using social media for outreach and promotion in archives

Cooperative digitization

Assessment in academic libraries

We look forward to seeing you in Georgetown this June!

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