Revelation

The purpose of the project is to extend the concept of the distributed national research library resource by a programme to enhance awareness of and access to the most substantial higher education and other collections for research into 19^th and 20^th century church history and Christian theology. The aims of the project are twofold. It includes a programme of targeted retrospective conversion of 145,950 monographs held in ten HE libraries across England, Scotland and Wales, as well as the development of a web-based guide mapping the most important research collections housed in up to 36 university, public or specialised libraries in the United Kingdom. The ten institutions involved in the retrospective conversion programme are strategically situated in London, the English provinces, Scotland and Wales. They combine excellence in library holdings with excellence in research outcomes (most achieving 5 or 5* in the 1996 RAE) and a pervasive cross-sectoral network for supporting research in theology and religious studies.

Revelation Database

The Revelation database provides a single point of access to descriptions of the major UK collections for research into 19^th and 20^th century church history and Christian theology. The descriptions, which map both archival and printed material, are at collection level and are linked to online catalogues. These resources represent material housed in almost 40 of the most significant repositories in the field- around half of which are university libraries, with the other half being from the public and specialist library sector.