June 26, 2014
The American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives added links last month to PDF scans of original documents found in two of its collections, Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton's diaries and documents regarding the Iturbide-Kearney family.The University Archives also launched a new finding aid (or online inventory of an archival collection) and digital scans of a third collection on June 16, featuring the Young Catholic Messenger magazine. Updating collections such as these is part of the mission of the University Archives to provide digital access for researchers and other interested parties to valuable documents in its possession.The items in Monsignor Fenton's scanned collection include one box of 11 journals that detail his trips to Rome to participate in the Second Vatican Council. Fenton was dean of the School of Theology at The Catholic University of America and editor of the American Ecclesiastical Reviews from 1944 to 1963. He also served on the Pontifical Theology Commission in preparation for the Second Vatican Council."We had already photocopied the Fenton diaries on several occasions, so deciding to digitize it was an easy decision," states W. John Shepherd, associate archivist. The Fenton diaries are popular because they supply an insider's view on the workings of the Church during the Second Vatican Council, he says. Images of individual pages of his full diaries can be found at archives.lib.cua.edu/findingaid/fenton.cfm .The second collection includes six boxes of scanned original documents from the Iturbide-Kearney family covering nearly 200 years, from 1787 to 1977, of Mexican and Washington, D.C., history. The Iturbide family traced its origins to Mexico, where Emperor Agustin I reigned from 1822 to 1823. The emperor's son, the self-styled Agustin Iturbide II, became a Mexican diplomat in Washington, D.C., and his grandson, the self-styled Augustin III, married into the Irish-American Kearney family and became a professor in Spanish and English at Georgetown University.
The scanned images in the collection include correspondence, Mexican government documents, military medals and coins, newspapers, magazines, and portraits. The Kearney portion contains correspondence from Louise Kearney, the self-styled Agustin Iturbide III's wife, as well as early family correspondence and portraits. The collection was donated in four parts, with the initial donation from Louise Kearney. The finding aid can be found at archives.lib.cua.edu/findingaid/iturbide.cfm .The third collection, the Young Catholic Messenger , includes 49 volumes of the magazine dating, with some gaps, from 1909 to 1970. The Young Catholic Messenger , first published in 1885 by Pflaum Publishers in Dayton, Ohio, was geared toward Catholic parochial school students. The magazine featured articles on everything from world politics and the latest Catholic news, to sports and entertainment in order to attract high school readers. The collection can be accessed at archives.lib.cua.edu/findingaid/YoungCathMess.cfm .Shepherd has been involved with digitization efforts since 2002. More recently, Mike Dobbs, acting digital archivist, has taken the lead on the project, assisted by Paul Kelly, archives technician; Steve Cherry, electronic services librarian; and three students - Raymond Moore, Shane Macdonald, and Chris Burroughs. The team has digitized so many collections that it has become a leader in the Catholic community in digital collections practice, Shepherd notes. It collaborates with similar institutions to increase digitization, promotion, and access.Shepherd says they have surpassed their initial expectation for digitization in the last few months, and hope in the future to streamline the processes, shifting attention to promoting the digital collections and analyzing their use.