Digitization of the Church Mission Society Periodicals Announced

Award-winning publisher Adam Matthew to digitize thousands of pages of content from world-renowned Archive

Marlborough, England - Adam Matthew today announced the signing of an agreement with the Church Mission Society (CMS) to digitize hundreds of thousands of pages of periodicals covering 1841 to 2009.

This announcement marks the latest stage in Adam Matthew’s association with the Church Mission Society spanning nearly 20 years.

Missionary Archives are recognized as a vitally important area of research with strong interdisciplinary appeal. CMS – originally founded in 1799 – has been one of the most influential Protestant mission agencies and its work led to the establishment of vibrant Anglican churches in India, New Zealand, Nigeria, East Africa and further afield. Its periodicals are a particularly rich source offering opportunities for in-depth research, important for Area Studies, Colonial History, Decolonization and the setting up of Independent Churches, Education, Medicine and Evangelism, Slavery Studies, Women’s Studies, Social History and Sociology.
This digitization of the CMS Periodicals includes contemporary materials from 1972 to 2009, allowing an up-to-date view of the Society’s activities. Published in two modules (due in 2015 and 2016), the full-colour, full-text searchable materials are rich in illustrations and photographs.

Emphasis has been made on providing complete coverage of all CMS periodicals.
Highlights include:

• CMS Gleaner, 1841-1921, continued as CMS Outlook, 1922-1972 and Yes Magazine, 1972-2009
• Medical Journals such as Mercy and Truth, The Mission Hospital and Preaching and Healing.
• Ruanda Notes and continuations, 1921-2002
•  India’s Women and China’s Daughters and Looking East at India’s Women and China’s Daughters, 1881-1957
• CMS Intelligencer, 1849-1906 and the continuation Church Missionary Review, 1907-1927
• South American Missionary Magazine, 1867-1974 and the continuation Share, 1975-2006
• CMS Japan Quarterly and wide range of periodicals focussing on mission work in China

Professor Brian Stanley, Director of the Centre for the Study of World Christianity at the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh states: “The CMS Archive is one of the richest available sources for scholars concerned with the role of religion in the interaction between the Western and non-Western worlds in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” 

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Adam Matthew, an imprint of SAGE, is an award winning publisher of digital primary source collections for the humanities and social sciences. Sourced from leading libraries and archives around the world, their unique research and teaching collections cover a wide range of subject areas from medieval family life to 20th century history, literature and culture. www.amdigital.co.uk

The Church Mission Society was founded in Aldersgate Street in the City of London on 12 April 1799, its founding members being committed to three ‘great enterprises’: abolition of the slave trade, social reform at home and world evangelisation. The overseas mission work of CMS began in Sierra Leone in 1804 but spread rapidly to India, Canada, New Zealand and the area around the Mediterranean. Its main areas of work in Africa have been in Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Congo, Rwanda and Sudan; in Asia, CMS's involvement has principally been in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, China and Japan; and in the Middle East, it has worked in Palestine, Jordan, Iran and Egypt. http://www.cms-uk.org/