Friends of ACU Library

Milliken Special Collections will be closed the week of June 11-15, 2018

Before the days of PowerPoint, preachers often used painted bed sheets as visual aids to illustrate their sermons. Often they were self-painted, but occasionally they hired artists to paint them. Neatly folded and packed in a suitcase, they could be conveniently carried from town to town for gospel meetings which often lasted a week or more.

This image shows an unusually graphic sermon chart that gets its inspiration from 2 Timothy 4:7, which describes the Christian's spiritual life as a race. The church is depicted as an arena, with Christians on the track — some persevering and some falling to various doubts and temptations. Individuals outside of the arena represent the "rest of the world" that is outside the fold.

This is just one in a collection of 78 sermon charts owned by
the ACU Library, dating from the early 1900s through the 1970s. This collection is one of only a few known to exist, and document an important part of American Christian history. All the charts in this collection have been meticulously photographed and can be viewed on the West Texas Digital Archives at https://bit.ly/2vM6wUa.

Your contribution on May 1st will help us continue telling these colorful stories! www.abilenegives.org

Here I Stand: Martin Luther’s Reformation at 500, An Exhibit Celebrating the Quincentenary of the Protestant Reformation...on display now on the lower level of the ACU Library and also available online here:

Here I Stand: Martin Luther’s Reformation at 500 Here I Stand: Martin Luther’s Reformation at 500, An Exhibit Celebrating the Quincentenary of the Protestant Reformation When Martin Luther (1483-1546) nailed to the Castle Church door in Wittenber…

New post on the Special Collections blog: Archives and archiving: What is 'processing'?

Archives and archiving: What is ‘processing’? With this post I launch an occasional series of reflections about what we do and how we do it. I’ll title these posts ‘Archives and Archiving’ and will from time to time write ab…

New post on the Special Collections blog: This just in: British Stone-Campbell periodicals

This Just In: British Stone-Campbell periodicals Another cataloging project completed in the summer of 2017 was the addition of sixty-three bound volumes of rare nineteenth and early twentieth century British Stone-Campbell periodicals. This gift…

New post on the ACU Special Collections blog: New additions to the Stone-Campbell digital archive. Mission Journal, RN Moody on the two ordinances, Norvel Young on Christian Education, RN Hogan's book of sermons, CP Roland's history of the Disciples in TN, the Cowan-Sommer debate, a very rare tract on the Holy Spirit, and Ida Withers Harrison's history of the CWBM. Take a look!

New additions to Stone-Campbell Digital Archive The latest additions to Stone-Campbell digital archive reflect the diversity of this movement. A new online home for a 1960s-1980s periodical, rare ephemeral tracts and booklets, along with book-l…

New post on the Special Collections blog:

This Just In: Christadelphian titles added Over the summer one of our projects was to complete cataloging for a small collection of Christadelphian titles we recently acquired. Tracing origins to John Thomas, the Christadelphians began in …

Friends of ACU Library Spring Banquet 6-8 p.m. Hunter Welcome Center • McCaleb Conference Center $40 per individual Table Sponsors ($1,000) will receive a table for eight, event recognition and four autographed books.  Register today!

Dearest Little Friends: a 1919 letter from a faculty member comes back to Abilene I never know what the mail will bring. Last week we received a kind donation from an eagle-eyed antiquer who spotted this letter from 1919. Written by S. Vernon McCasland, faculty member in the S…

It's that time of year again! Follow the link below to get information and tickets on this year's Spring Event, featuring special guest speaker Max Lucado!
http://facul.org/spring-event-max-lucado/

Spring Event: Max Lucado FACUL is delighted to announce that tickets for the annual Spring Event are now available! Our special guest this year is none other than Max Lucado, best-selling author and alumnus of ACU. Also being celebrated this year is the 50th anniversary of our organization. FACUL was founded in 1966, with O…

Good afternoon, Friends! The library had a crisis over the weekend: a leak caused damage to nearly 200 art books, totaling almost $10,000 in damage. Below you will find a leak to the Optimist's article, as well as the donation website.
http://www.acuoptimist.com/2015/10/librarians-rush-to-rescue-water-damaged-books/
http://facul.org/?p=777

Librarians rush to rescue water-damaged books Librarians and library staff responded to a leak that damaged almost $10,000 worth of books on the ground level of the library last week.