Baptist Historical Society awards grant to the Angus Library for digitisation 

The Baptist Historical Society has taken a major initiative in awarding a grant of £2000 to the Angus Library at Regent’s Park College for the digitisation of early records from important Baptist churches in the United Kingdom

The decision was taken by the Committee and announced on the occasion of the Annual Meeting of the society, conducted virtually by Zoom.

The Baptist Historical Society President, the Revd Dr Keith G Jones, said of the award, 'We are not a rich Society, but we wanted to do something significant to assist the Angus Library to launch their digitisation of major UK Baptist historical documents to assist scholars throughout the world to do their research.

'The Angus library is one of the primary collections of historical records of Baptists in the British isles and we wanted to enable them to begin this important work. We hope that other societies, institutions and, perhaps, the Baptist Union and the regional associations will help the Angus Library in this vital initiative.'

Commenting on the digitisation process, Angus Librarian, Emily Burgoyne, said, 'We have worked hard to identify candidates for digitisation, with a wide variety of material to choose from but we have selected items based on their physical condition, significance within the collection and their value to a wide range of researchers.'

Among items put forward to digitisation are the Broughton (Hampshire) Church records (1655 – 1891) and the Cripplegate (London) church book (1689-1723). It is hoped that records from key churches in various parts of the UK will be included in the project.