Media Advisory: Z. Smith Reynolds Library receives Davis C. Woolley Award for Outstanding Achievement in Assessing and Preserving Baptist History
The Special Collections & Archives Department, located in the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University, has been awarded the Davis C. Woolley Award for Achievement in Assessing and Preserving Baptist History.
Presented by the president of the Society on May 22 during the annual meeting of the Baptist History and Heritage Society, the award is given to an individual or a state program that demonstrated great progress and achievements during the preceding calendar year.
The North Carolina Baptist Historical Collection at Wake Forest (also known as the Ethel Taylor Crittenden Collection in Baptist History) documents the history of North Carolina Baptist churches, institutions, and individuals. The collection contains materials on Southern, Missionary, Primitive, African-American, Union and Alliance of Baptist churches. These materials include over 16,000 books, periodicals, association annuals and other printed materials. In addition, there are more than 1,000 biographical folders containing information on and photographs of Baptist pastors and Wake Forest alumni.
Over the past year, the Department has partnered with UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University on a grant project called Religion in North Carolina, answered numerous reference questions and processed several important Baptist collections, including those of Warren Carr, Wayne Oates and Bill Leonard. Especially noteworthy are the papers of Henlee Barnette, who was a Wake Forest alumnus, professor of Christian Ethics at Southern Baptist Seminary, civil rights activist, writer and speaker.
Davis C. Woolley served as the second executive secretary-treasurer of the Historical Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention from 1959 to 1971. In his honor, the Historical Commission established the Davis C. Woolley Award in 1991. The purpose of the award is to encourage creativity and excellence in state Baptist history programs, including all organizations involved in assessing and preserving Baptist history.
The Baptist History and Heritage Society is a non-profit, national, independent, diverse organization of Baptist historians and other individuals and partner institutions committed to communicating the story of Baptists through the study, interpretation, publication and advocacy of Baptist history: www.baptisthistory.org
