The department serves as the home of the Mercer University Archives. This includes information on all of Mercer’s schools and colleges as well as the Tift College collection acquired during the merger of the two schools. Materials housed include such publications as course catalogs, yearbooks, student publications, president’s reports, trustees’ minutes, programs from university events, and archival copies of all Mercer University Press books. There are also collections of campus photographs, building plans and maps, ledgers from Penfield, programs and records from the athletics department, and audio-visual materials produced by the University.
Since the late 1800s, Mercer University has collected and preserved historical materials produced by and of interest to Georgia Baptists. The scope of the collection encompasses not only the Georgia Baptist Convention, but also African-American, Free Will, and Primitive Baptists, as well as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Selected materials concerning Baptists in the Southeast (Georgia’s contiguous states) are also collected, as are materials of a broader geographic area documenting under-represented groups (e.g., Primitive Baptist periodicals from a variety of states are kept). The department is the official depository for the state and national offices of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the national office of Baptist Women in Ministry. Baptist collections include church minutes and histories, Baptist association minutes and histories, Georgia Baptist Convention annuals, Southern Baptist Convention annuals, Baptist newspapers and periodicals, microfilm records of some of the above materials and of early manuscript records, Georgia city/county/state histories, and personal papers of Georgia ministers.
Special Collections maintains a limited number of rare and fragile materials and a number of miscellaneous collections of gifts to the library. The theology collection of Albert Henry Newman, noted Mercerian, includes the library’s oldest books in a variety of languages. A collection of textbooks used by students at Penfield, first editions of the works of numerous British authors and poets (including Sir Walter Scott and C. S. Lewis), the writings of Vladimir Volkoff, and significant Baptist publications round out the collection. Volumes older than 1865 in the general stacks have been moved to Special Collections to ensure their safety. Other fragile and oversized items have also been relocated to the department as the need has arisen.
