NASHVILLE — Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) annuals dating to 1845 now are available online in a searchable PDF format following a joint digitization project by the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives (SBHLA) and Baylor University Central Libraries.
The 154 volumes represent a valuable resource for both scholarly research and personal information, said Bill Sumners, director of the SBHLA. “The SBC annual is a basic document for Southern Baptist history. All the major events that have happened within the convention are documented in the annuals,” Sumners said.
The annual publication records business actions taken during convention gatherings, including entity reports, pertinent statistics, state convention information, and lists of staff, trustees and committees, according to the SBHLA website. A minister list appearing at the end of certain annuals includes pastors, ministers of education, ministers of youth, associate ministers, missions pastors, ordained ministers, chaplains, and evangelists. The partnership project with Baylor began in June 2010, after the SBHLA concluded a two-year project of scanning archived Baptist Press articles dating between 1948 and 1996, Sumners said. The actual scanning of the annuals, funded by Baylor, started in August 2010. The Executive Committee provided funding to make the results searchable and to post them on the Internet in July 2011.
To access the files, visit www.sbhla.org and click on Collections to find “SBC Annuals” on the list. The archives can be searched using names, keywords or phrases.
The files are indexed through Google Search and can be located through that search utility as well.
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