Sharing Your Story:
Using the Archives to Write Your Church’s History

Whether or not your church has an upcoming anniversary, it is still important to consider how to share your church’s history with the wider world. Church histories are not only of interest to today’s congregants, but to members of a church’s community, genealogists, family historians, local history enthusiasts, archivists writing historical notes, and prospective church members. Fortunately, many of the tools necessary to research your church’s history can be found within your archive.

In this webinar, CLA archivists Billy McCarthy and Zachary Bodnar explored the types of records that appear within church archives and how they can be used to write a church’s story. They discussed options for writing community-focused histories that focus on people and celebrate a church’s accomplishments, overview practices of reparative history, and consider how churches should write about the portions of their past that may not reflect their current beliefs or values.

SPEAKER BIOS

Zachary Bodnar graduated with a Masters of Library and Information Science from Simmons University, with a concentration in archives management, in 2018. Prior to his work at the CLA, Zachary worked at the Bellamy-Ferriday House and Garden archive, the Vassar College Special Collections, the Harvard Law School Library, and the Harvard Botany Libraries. Zachary joined the CLA as an Archives Assistant in 2017, helping to prepare materials for digitization through the New England’s Hidden Histories program. In 2018, he took on the title of Archivist. His professional interests include metadata collection and management, digital archiving, audio/visual preservation, and archives management.

Billy McCarthy graduated with a Masters of Library and Information Science (MLIS) at Simmons University with a concentration in Archival Management. He started working at the CLA through a graduate internship and was hired full-time as an Archivist in 2018. Billy is the Head of Reader Services, helping the CLA’s visitors with reference requests and facilitating in-person research. Billy also serves as the collection manager for the archives, working with CLA’s offsite vendor to protect and maintain the organization’s archival records. Some of his professional interests include increasing access, collection management, processing of complex materials, and facilitating research.