On Friday, November 9, 2012, 10 – 11 a.m. the Center for Adventist Research celebrated the publication of the remainder of the Ellen G. White periodicals. This event was an opportunity to express our thanks to Daniel Woolf for his donation of a book scanner and funding for scanning the remaining English language periodicals articles by Ellen G. White. His generous donation allowed us to complete this ambitious task, which will lead to the publication of Volumes 3 & 4 of the “Ellen G. White Periodical Resource Collection”.

This publication has fulfilled a long wished for dream held by Tim Poirier, Vice-Director of the White Estate. When he last worked on this project 23 years ago, he put his work on the shelf with the hope that he would once again we able to pull the materials out and send them off for publication. Though unable to attend the celebration event in person he sent a letter that expressed his appreciation. He writes in his letter:  “I was asked to compile these volumes toward the end of the 1980s, but with the release of the Ellen White CD-ROM in 1990, which included nearly all these articles, the publishing house decided to abandon the plan of issuing the rest of the articles in printed volumes.  Since 1990 I’ve had the daily reminder of this unfinished project sitting on the bookshelf in my office, with the table of contents for volumes three and four archived in my overhead cabinet—hoping for a day when there would be sufficient interest and resources to complete the series.”

Juliette Johnson, Digitization Manager at the Center for Adventist Research, spent many hours working on the final computer file to submit for publication. Speaking of her work, Julie says when digitizing these materials and making corrections,  and cleaning up the text, she can’t help but read the material. She has grown in her appreciation for the material and the work we are doing here at the Center to increase access for researchers around the world. Also putting in many hours towards completing this project student workers employed by the Center. Samuel Pagán did most of the scanning, and  Joseph Abandon-Sam helped with some of the cleanup and with typing up the index and table of contents.  Lubasi Ngonda was involved as well in a variety of tasks.

The Center is grateful to all of our friends for what they have done over the years.  It has made a real difference in acquiring and making available important Adventist resources.  This has helped the Seventh-day Adventist Church strengthen our sense of identity and mission. To our friends, we say thank you for your continued interest in and support of the work of the Center for Adventist Research.

Each year the Center for Adventist Research continues to promote and preserve our Adventist heritage. Through digitization projects, Adventist history tours, assistance to researchers, and symposiums many lives are changed for the better.

In particular the paper digitization project has enjoyed great success in the past year. All the foreign language Ellen White titles held in our collection have been scanned. We have made good progress on converting our White Document File to digital form. Through the General Conference we purchased new equipment, an Indus BookScanner 9000, that increased the quality and productivity of paper digitization. These materials have been processed and the digital file has been made accessible to the world via the Internet.

The goal of the Center for Adventist Research is to continue to provide historical resources for the Seventh-day Adventist church and world. With the help of donations from supporters such as you we will continue to see improvements in understanding of Adventist identity and purpose.

Thanks again to our friends for your generous support of our efforts to serve our library patron’s research requests originating from all over the world.