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

异议学院在线：虚拟图书馆系统构成了一个主要研究项目的一部分，该项目研究1660-1860年不列颠群岛异议学院的历史，由威廉姆斯博士异议研究中心管理。最早的持不同政见者学院是在1662年《统一法案》（Act of Uniformity）颁布后复辟的，旨在为持不同政见者的新教学生提供类似于牛津和剑桥的高等教育，这些学生基本上被排除在牛津和剑桥之外。他们的主要目的是为牧师准备候选人，但也有许多受过教育的非专业学生。学院的教师和学生对思想的发展做出了根本性的贡献，尤其是在神学、哲学、文学和科学领域。在19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向持不同政见者开放的地方大学的成立以及牛津和剑桥的最终改革所取代。幸存下来的学院变成了培养部长候选人的宗派培训学院。异议学院项目将有两个成果：《英伦三岛异议学院历史，1660-1860》，一本正在筹备中的多作者著作，以及《异议学院在线》，两个已经在威廉姆斯博士中心网站上发布的完全可搜索的数据库。第二个数据库是由美国人权协会资助的虚拟图书馆系统，它使用现代图书馆软件，根据现存的图书馆目录和借阅记录重建虚拟的历史图书馆。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（主要是一神教派），以及伦敦的米尔恩公理会学院和荷马顿公理会学院。用户可以搜索特定的标题或作者；浏览学院图书馆的书架；比较不同图书馆的馆藏；浏览、搜索、整理学生贷款记录。他们可以了解到在非主流教育中书籍的获取和使用，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，它将改变我们对不同教育中书籍和思想流通的理解，并为未来与历史图书馆的合作建立一个模式。在图书馆项目的过程中，发现的档案资料远远超过了可以输入数据库的资料。VLS包含的浸礼会学院和一神教学院的数据比公理会学院的数据多，而且只有伦敦地区的公理会学院有代表性。曼彻斯特北部公理学院的后续项目的目标是扩大原始数据库，包括约克郡和兰开夏郡公理学院的图书馆，将日期延长到20世纪，并首次输入个人书籍的出处细节。该项目将展示一个二十世纪的教派图书馆是如何通过收购、捐赠、继承和从十七世纪到二十世纪的转移的过程发展起来的，以及书籍是如何从私人转移到教育用途的，从而展示了公教会在十九世纪和二十世纪约克郡和兰开夏郡的力量。该项目有许多应用和好处：它将使那些目前正在培训公理会牧师的人了解他们自己的遗产和教育历史；它将为图书馆员和图书历史学家提供一个模型，以恢复分散和丢失的藏书信息；它将向当代私人图书馆展示如何通过VLS模型使他们自己的历史图书馆馆藏可以在网上搜索；它将为宗教、教育、社会、图书馆和书籍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 In the course of the nineteenth century the academies' original purpose was largely superseded by the founding of London University and the provincial universities, which were open to dissenters, and by the eventual reform of Oxford and Cambridge.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.