Archival Collection

The Centre has a unique and extensive archive of special collections in the history of world Christianity and the missionary movement.

All books and pamphlets in the Centre’s collection are catalogued by the University’s library catalogue and housed in University’s Main Library. Information on the archival collections is available through Archives Online and on Archives Hub. Many of the photographs from the Centre’s collection have been digitised, and are now available through the University of Southern California’s International Mission Photography Archive.

Tinted lantern slide showing a group of Hindu men bowing to pray, ca. 1920. CSCNWW33/OS16/76

Visitors on sabbatical or study leave are welcome. The collections include:

  • Latin Link (formerly the Evangelical Union of South America)
  • The Regions Beyond Missionary Union
  • Sudan United Mission/Action Partners (now Pioneers)
  • Records of the Edinburgh 2010 project

There are also extensive runs of nineteenth- and twentieth-century mission periodicals.  Our holdings include:

  • A collection of periodicals relating to the churches of Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Pacific.
  • A corpus of monographs, pamphlets and ephemera relating to the churches of Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Pacific, including large quantities of Christian literature produced there.
  • The archives of certain missionary societies, and a substantial collection of private papers, missionary papers and others. Other missionary archives are held on microfiche.

For further enquiries about the archival collection, please email HeritageCollections@ed.ac.uk.