Pitts Theology Library is pleased to announce that the Lettie Pate Evans Foundation has awarded $150,000 to the Historic Rural Church Archive, a collaborative digital project featuring resources and materials related to historic rural churches in Georgia. The two-year project is led by Historic Rural Churches of Georgia, a non-profit dedicated to documenting and preserving the histories of architecturally unique churches at the center of rural communities.

Building on ten years of development by project partners, Pitts staff will produce the digital platform and infrastructure at the center of the project and coordinate the digitization, processing, and presenting of materials from both academic libraries and community contributors. The project team at Pitts includes:

• Spencer Roberts, Head of Digital Initiatives and Technologies
• Brinna Michael, Cataloging and Metadata Librarian
• Ann McShane, Digital Asset Librarian
• Emily Corbin, Special Collections Reference Coordinator

The Historic Rural Church Archive will bring together collections from Pitts Theology Library at Emory University, Jack Tarver Library at Mercer University, and the John Bulow Campbell Library at Columbia Theological Seminary. Each library holds unique collections representing churches in the three largest Christian denominations in Georgia: Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian. Photographs taken by volunteers working for HRCGA will also be included in the archive.

The archive will also feature digital materials contributed by community members through a custom uploading form designed for ease of use and basic information collection. The platform will present all of these materials together, providing a single resource for researchers, genealogists, and visitors to explore various elements of rural communities.

Once complete, the Historic Rural Church Archive will facilitate further collaboration with the Georgia Public Library System to connect rural communities with the project and provide support for local contributors. The project will also become a contributor of relevant digital materials to the Digital Library of Georgia.