Private Books for Educational Use - the Formation of the Northern Congregational College Library

持不同政见的书院在线：虚拟图书馆系统是1660-1860年不列颠群岛持不同政见的书院历史的主要研究项目的一部分，该项目由威廉姆斯博士的异议研究中心管理。最早的持不同政见者学院是在1662年《统一法案》复辟后建立的，旨在为英国国教持不同政见的新教学生提供类似于牛津和剑桥的高等教育，他们基本上被排除在高等教育之外。他们的主要目的是为部长候选人做准备，但许多受过教育的非专业学生也是如此。学院的导师和学生对思想的发展做出了根本性的贡献，特别是在神学、哲学、文学和科学领域。在十九世纪的过程中，学院的最初目的在很大程度上被伦敦大学和对持不同政见者开放的省立大学的建立所取代，并被牛津和剑桥的最终改革所取代。幸存的学院被改造成教派培训学院，为部长候选人提供培训。异议学院项目将有两个结果：一部不列颠群岛异议学院的历史，1660-1860年，一本多作者的书正在筹备中；以及异议学院在线，这两个完全可搜索的数据库已经发布在威廉姆斯博士的中心网站上。第二个数据库是AHRC资助的虚拟图书馆系统，它使用现代图书馆软件，根据幸存的图书馆目录和借阅记录重建虚拟历史图书馆。这些图书馆包括布里斯托尔浸信会学院、曼彻斯特和约克的曼彻斯特学院(主要是一神论者)，以及伦敦的米尔艾德和霍默顿公理学院。用户可以搜索特定的书名或作者；浏览学院图书馆的书架；比较不同图书馆的藏书；浏览、搜索和分类学生的借阅记录。他们可以了解到反对教育中书籍的获得和使用，以及书籍对学生智力形成的影响。VLS已经被认为是一种重要的创新资源，这是第一个此类资源，它将改变我们对持不同意见的教育中书籍和思想流通的理解，并为未来与历史图书馆的工作建立一个模式。在图书馆项目过程中，发现的档案材料远远超过输入数据库的数量。VLS包括更多关于浸礼会和一神论学院的数据，而不是关于公理公会学院的数据，并且只有伦敦地区的公理学院有代表性。曼彻斯特北方公理学院后续项目的目标是扩大原始数据库，将约克郡和兰开夏公理学院的图书馆包括在内，将日期延长至20世纪，并首次输入个别书籍的出处细节。该项目将展示一个20世纪的教派图书馆是如何通过从17世纪到20世纪的获取、捐赠、继承和转移的过程发展起来的，以及书籍如何从私人使用转向教育用途，从而展示公理主义在19世纪和20世纪约克郡和兰开夏郡的力量。该项目有许多应用和好处：它将使那些正在培训教会牧师自己的遗产和教育史的人参与进来；它将为图书馆员和图书史学家提供一个恢复有关分散和丢失的图书收藏的信息的模式；它将向当代私人图书馆展示他们如何通过VLS的模式使他们自己的历史图书馆藏书可以在线搜索；它将向宗教、教育、社会、图书馆和图书历史学家介绍一种研究阅读史的新方法。

Dissenting Academies Online: Virtual Library System forms part of a major research project on the history of the dissenting academies in the British Isles, 1660-1860, managed by the Dr Williams's Centre for Dissenting Studies. The earliest dissenting academies were established after the Restoration as a result of the 1662 Act of Uniformity, and were intended to provide Protestant students dissenting from the Church of England with a higher education similar to that at Oxford and Cambridge, from which they were largely excluded. Their main purpose was to prepare candidates for the ministry, but many educated lay students as well. The tutors and students at the academies contributed in fundamental ways to the development of ideas, notably in the fields of theology, philosophy, literature, and science. In the course of the nineteenth century the academies' original purpose was largely superseded by the founding of London University and the provincial universities, which were open to dissenters, and by the eventual reform of Oxford and Cambridge. The surviving academies were transformed into denominational training colleges for ministerial candidates. The Dissenting Academies Project will have two outcomes: A History of the Dissenting Academies in the British Isles, 1660-1860, a multi-authored book in preparation, and Dissenting Academies Online, two fully searchable databases already published on the Dr Williams's Centre website. The second database, the AHRC-funded Virtual Library System, uses modern library software to recreate virtual historic libraries from surviving library catalogues and loan records. The libraries included are those of Bristol Baptist College, Manchester College (largely Unitarian) in Manchester and York, and the Congregational Colleges of Mile End and Homerton in London. Users can search for particular titles or authors; browse the shelves of an academy library; compare the holdings of different libraries; and browse, search, and sort students' loan records. They can learn about the acquisition and use of books in dissenting education, and the impact that books had on the students' intellectual formation. The VLS has already been recognised as an important and innovative resource, the first of its kind, which will transform our understanding of the circulation of books and ideas in dissenting education and establish a model for future work with historic libraries. In the course of the Library project far more archival material was uncovered than could be entered into the database. The VLS includes more data on the Baptist and Unitarian academies than on the Congregational ones, and only Congregational academies in the London area are represented. The aims of the follow-on project on the Northern Congregational College, Manchester, are to enlarge the original database to include the libraries of Congregational colleges in Yorkshire and Lancashire, to extend the date up to the twentieth century, and to enter provenance details of individual books for the first time. The project will show how a twentieth-century denominational library developed through a process of acquisition, donation, inheritance, and transfer from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, and how books moved from private to educational use, thereby demonstrating the strength of Congregationalism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Yorkshire and Lancashire. The project has a number of applications and benefits: it will engage those currently training Congregational ministers in their own heritage and educational history; it will provide a model for librarians and book historians for recovering information about dispersed and lost book collections; it will show contemporary private libraries how they can make their own historic library collections searchable online through the model of the VLS; and it will introduce religious, educational, social, library, and book historians to a new way of researching the history of reading.