Catholic Research Initiatives at Boston College Libraries
In keeping with its motto of “Value Beyond Discovery,” Boston College Libraries is pleased to offer diverse research opportunities to encourage widespread engagement with Catholic content at Boston College and beyond. This programming intends to facilitate collaboration between institutions and scholars and to promote scholarship on the Catholic Church.
Programs & Opportunities
Catholic Religious Archives
Preserving and making accessible archival records of religious orders and congregations
Travel Grants
Fostering innovation and collaboration with Catholic source materials
Digital Initiatives
Facilitating research at Boston College and other archives with under-utilized Catholic collections
Events
Providing settings at Boston College and online for scholarly inquiry and advancement
Publications
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit
Program Highlight: Catholic Almanacs Project
With guidance from BC Libraries’ Digital Scholarship Group, BC students are contributing to a pilot project that involves extracting data from nineteenth-century Catholic almanacs published in the United States. They have learned XML coding to convert the almanac’s information on institutions, priests, and women religious into data points for later use in maps and visualizations (learn more).
An almanac page juxtaposed with an encoded version of the text. The encoding organizes and structures the text into data points.
The interactive map being created with the alamanac data.
Program Highlight: Program Highlight: Catholic Historical Research Anthology
Launched and managed by BC Libraries’ Digital Production Department, the Catholic Historical Research Anthology, is an open-access, curated, and growing compilation of newspapers, journals, and books to facilitate the study and understanding of the Catholic Church. Initial titles complement the archival collections at the Catholic Religious Archives at Boston College, and, with time, publications will also include the histories of the institutions, people, and religious congregations identified in the almanac project.
Program Highlight: Interactive Catholic Artifacts Collection
The Digital Scholarship Group has also begun scanning religious artifacts housed at the Catholic Religious Archive and elsewhere at Boston College. The collection of 3D models will allow users to observe the physicality of the object in greater detail through digital means.
A statue of Mary, Catholic Religious Archives
African Wood Carving gifted to the Franciscan Missionary Sisters for Africa, Catholic Religious Archives