Finding Sisters in Cyberspace: Digitization and the Archives of Women’s Religious Communities

Introduction

Roman Catholic sisters are everywhere in cyberspace: on websites, blogs, podcasts, and many social media platforms. Resources range from the online news and information resource Global Sisters Report to the faith community and vocation resource A Nun’s Life Ministry to a women religious app sponsored by the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious.⁴ Individuals have created resources such as Willing Hearts about the experience of Holy Cross Sisters as nurses during the U.S. Civil War, which the authors describe as creative non-fiction.⁵ New websites appear all the time. Comprehensive, robust, and scholarly digital projects documenting women religious have been fewer and more difficult to find, however, but several interesting projects are currently under development.

A few years ago, I was sitting next to a prioress of a Benedictine community in Ohio at a conference banquet. She told me that her community had only seven members and she did not think it had a future. As the de facto congregation archivist, she was concerned about preserving its legacy and making that story accessible to researchers. She told me that volunteers had begun digitizing the archives by scanning documents. This story remained with me as I wondered how, where, and in what format the sisters were preserving these documents. When I was invited to participate in this session, I was excited by the prospect of investigating digital archives and resources related to women’s religious communities.

A sample image from the Providence Archives in Seattle: Sr. John of God sewing vestments, Sacred Heart Academy, ca. 1913. Courtesy Providence Archives, Seattle. Image #67.D4.84

Women Religious Community Archives

The records of women’s religious communities can be found at many types of institutions, including colleges, universities, archdiocesan, and diocesan archives. Most archival collections, however, are maintained by the religious communities themselves. Women religious community archives are private entities that serve their members. Like business archives, they have no obligation to make archival resources available to researchers, although most do to some extent.⁶ The Archivists of Congregations of Women Religious (ACWR) is an independent professional organization for these archives. As an ACWR associate member, I have access to the membership directory, which I surveyed to explore digital resources on members’ websites. The parameters of the directory necessarily limited my survey to American communities or American provinces of international communities.

While almost all religious communities have websites, most community archives do not have their own pages on the community’s website. Most congregational websites include historical content, such as timelines, photographs, and historical information. A few communities have created more comprehensive digital resources, which tend to be attached to larger provincial centers. The Providence Archives in Seattle makes available historical records documenting the Sisters of Providence in the West and Providence Health and Services. The website of the archives includes a digital collections database of several thousand photographs and documents created using the CONTENTdm™ digital collection management system.⁷ Another example is the Digital Archives of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, St. Paul Province, which include digitized books, pamphlets, and oral history transcripts.⁸ Another model is being used by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, who are building a digital archives to bring together dispersed community archives. The purpose of the Virtual Archive is to “lower the obstacles between the people interested in the history of the Sisters and the Order and finding materials in the archival collections. It also helps further part of our archival mission of making our collections available to the current Sisters, relatives of Sisters, alumnae and staff at schools where Sisters taught, local communities, and researchers.”⁹

Most religious community archives have very limited resources of personnel and budget. Concerned with basic preservation and access, they have not able to create large digitization projects on their own. Because of declining numbers and an aging membership, religious communities are increasingly centralizing and merging, at the same time as continuing to absorb the records of closed institutions, particularly schools and...