Five Things You Should Know about the HDS Library
Students take a closer look at items from the HDS Library’s special collection items. Photo by Marisol Andrade Muñoz.
From April 6 to April 12, 2025, the American Library Association celebrates National Library Week—an annual tribute to the vital role libraries play in enriching lives. In line with this year’s theme, “Drawn to the Library,” the HDS Office of Communications is excited to showcase the diverse ways the Harvard Divinity School Library inspires creativity, fosters academic growth, and unites the community.
Whether you are preparing for final exams, booking study rooms, exploring ancient Bibles and other religious texts, or researching artifacts and history, the HDS Library offers a wealth of resources in a welcoming environment for students and scholars.
With its knowledgeable staff, vast collections, and inspiring spaces, the HDS Library stands out as a vital, treasured hub within the HDS community.
"The library is your partner in teaching, learning, and research," said Beth Bidlack, HDS librarian. "You’d be surprised by the variety of ways we work with faculty, students, and researchers."
During our recent visit to the library, we discovered five interesting areas that visitors can explore.
1. Areas of Reflection and Relaxation
Study spaces can be found on the ground floor of the library—along with open tables and chairs on the upper levels—providing areas for reflection and relaxation. This setup also allows students to personalize their study environment.
Students can find reclining chairs on the upper floors of the library. Photo by Steve Gilbert
2. Book Conservation: ‘Like Surgical Operating Rooms’
Within its special collections, the Harvard Divinity School Library houses approximately 85,000 printed volumes, pamphlets, and broadsides, spanning imprints from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century. The collection encompasses a wide variety of religious traditions, including works dedicated to the study of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and other faiths.
Rare books in the library have annotations, flaws, and bindings that reveal insights into their unique histories. Despite their age and sometimes fragile conditions, even rare books are available for research.
When a book shows significant signs of wear and tear, it is carefully renewed and repaired by the Harvard Library conservation staff in a dedicated conservation lab or at Harvard’s Weissman Preservation Center. These specialized spaces function much like surgical operating rooms, equipped with precise tools designed for intricate and delicate conservation work.
Rare, weathered Dutch book from 1714 with wavy marble cover and untrimmed pages. Photo by HDS Library
Late sixteenth-century book with leather covering the spine and board with imperfection exacerbated by age and fluctuating humidity. Photo by HDS Library
3. Multimedia and Manuscripts: Preserving the Past
The HDS Library holds over 5,000 linear feet of archival material, including letters, diaries, photographs, manuscripts, and drafts, collected in various formats—paper, audiovisual, and digital. The library serves as the official archives for the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, and Beacon Press, housing UU ministers' papers, records of UU congregations, and documents from UU-affiliated groups.
It also holds the papers of notable theologians and HDS faculty. The archives are used by historians, scholars of religion, genealogists, and even public health researchers. Like the rare book collection, the archives are available for research.
Increasingly, special collections materials are being digitized for preservation and free online access. Select digital projects include:
Contagion: Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics: An open collection of materials that contribute to the understanding of the global, social-history, and public-policy implications of various diseases.
Harvard-Google Project: A collaboration between the Harvard University Library system and Google to digitize many of Harvard's library books. HDS was the first Harvard library to become involved with the project, and HDS’s contribution makes the study of religious and theological content accessible to internet users across the globe through Google search.
New Testament and Archaeological Slides: Over 8,000 digital images for teaching and research in New Testament studies, Greek and Roman mystery religions, and early Christian history.<
Religious Aspects of the American Civil War: Pamphlets published during the American Civil War from HDS’s collection and others across the Harvard Library system.
Jessica Suárez, curator of manuscripts and archives, sorts diverse manuscripts and papers of prominent theological scholars and twentieth-century theologians. Photo by HDS Library
4. Special Collections: Carlton Pearson Archive
Among the library's special collections is the Carlton Pearson Archive, a diverse collection comprising over 5,000 digitized items, including VHS, U-Matic and Betacam tapes. This collection has attracted significant interest from religious scholars.
Pearson was a televangelist and gospel vocalist who founded a Pentecostal megachurch in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which at its height of popularity in the 1990s, had an average attendance of over 6,000 a week. A controversial but important figure in the modern religious world, he made waves in the multimedia space with his unidentical preaching style and teachings on inclusivity and multifaith belief.
Pearson’s ministry was featured on NPR’s This American Life and his life was later dramatized for the 2018 Netflix-produced movie Come Sunday.
To access materials from this collection, all library patrons interested can visit the special collections reading room or view digitized content online.
5. Featured Exhibition: Experiential Journey, Emotional Engagement
Curated by Melissa Wood Bartholomew, MDiv ’15, associate dean for diversity, inclusion, and belonging, in collaboration with the HDS Library staff and with support from the HDS Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, the exhibit, "Harvard Divinity School & Legacies of Slavery & Resistance: A Site for Reckoning, Healing & Repair through Love," is designed to encourage reflection that leads to action.
This exhibit was launched in February 2024 and works to connect the School to the Report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery, which Harvard released in April 2022.
As stated in the exhibit description, “this exhibit foregrounds Harvard Divinity School’s connection to slavery—the slave money that helped establish it, as well as the members of the HDS community who fought to resist slavery and the vestiges of the colonial religion that justified it. It also illuminates a path to healing and repair.”
Organized through a framework that calls visitors into a process of “reckoning from the inside out,” visitors are invited to explore each section of the exhibit through a lens of restorative and reparative love.
The experiential journey of the exhibit is intended for emotional engagement, promoting healing and love as resources for repairing hard history. And as the exhibit description asserts, the experience is designed to “unsettle you.”
“Perhaps the most compelling dimension of the exhibit is the wall that lists the names of the more than 70 enslaved people who are listed in the report, including those listed as unknown,” Bartholmew said.
Bartholomew and Gloria Korsman, associate librarian for research services, have guided eight groups through a tour of the exhibit, which will remain in the library at least through the end of the 2024-25 academic year. To continue to serve as a resource for HDS and the university, and to increase its public reach and impact, the exhibit will have a digital presence that can be experienced beyond the walls of the HDS Library.
Melissa Wood Bartholomew, MDiv ’15, associate dean for diversity, inclusion, and belonging, leads an intimate tour of the exhibit. Photo by Eden Olayiwole
Staff from across the Harvard Library system gathered to take a closer look at the exhibit’s artifacts. Photo by Eden Olayiwole
Editor’s note: For more behind the scenes coverage of the library, check out our short video on YouTube!
—by Eden Olaywole, digital communications specialist