Apologies for cross-posting.


MUNDUS Gateway to Missionary Collections in the UK

www.mundus.ac.uk

SOAS Library is pleased to announce the launch of the Mundus Gateway, the
on-line guide to missionary-related resources in the UK. Since the early
eighteenth century missionaries have set out from Britain to evangelize the
world. In so doing they have created or collected a wealth of
documentation, including archives, personal papers, printed books and
pamphlets, photographs, films, sound recordings and artefacts. The
materials document the encounter between western missionaries and the
peoples and terrain of Africa, Asia, the Pacific Islands and the Americas
over a two-hundred-year period and are increasingly being used and
appreciated by researchers from a broad range of academic disciplines.
However, missionary collections are widely dispersed and difficult to
locate. For the first time descriptions of these scattered resources have
been brought together in a unified electronic guide.

What does the Mundus Gateway contain?
The Mundus database contains summary descriptions of more than 400
collections held in over 50 institutions in England, Northern Ireland,
Scotland and Wales. Each description provides content and contextual
information, and details of finding aids and of access conditions. The
database can be accessed in a number of ways: free-text searching, browsing
by name, place and subject indexes and using a clickable map. There are
links to missionary-related on-line resources and other useful web sites in
the British Isles and the wider world while the Mundus Gallery provides a
sample of the extensive range of visual materials to be found in many
missionary collections.

Who should use the Mundus Gateway?
Missionary collections comprise research materials of global significance,
unique in their range of subject matter and form. Researchers with
disciplinary backgrounds in the arts, humanities and sciences as well as
missiologists and church historians will find written, printed, oral and
visual resources which illuminate such topics as race, class, gender,
religion, cross-cultural relations, art, education, medicine, languages and
literature, as well as less-expected ones such as climatology, transport
and genetics. The Mundus guide also aims to assist in the planning of
research visits since full location and access details for each holding
institution are supplied.

How was the Mundus Gateway created?
The Gateway is the culmination of the three-year RSLP funded Mundus
Project, to improve access to missionary collections held in a wide variety
of institutions throughout the UK. It was compiled by project staff at the
School of Oriental and African Studies with technical assistance from staff
at the University of London Computer Centre and in consultation with
partners at the Universities of Birmingham, Cambridge, Edinburgh and
Oxford. In addition to the Gateway the Mundus project has achieved the
cataloguing of 90 previously unlisted archival collections and some 40,000
photographs. On-line catalogues have been created to a number of major
archives and to some 15,000 printed books. Measures have also been taken to
improve the physical storage of fragile materials and to conserve badly
affected documents. The Mundus Gateway will continue to be maintained and
updated at the School of Oriental and African Studies under the direction
of the Archivist, Rosemary Seton.

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