A Tale of Two THeologians

While perusing the Google forum on “Archives in the News,” there was one article that struck me. On October 16th, an article connected to Pittsburgh’s 90.5 WESA radio station reported that a group based in the city dedicated itself towards digitizing the works of 19th Century Cardinal John Henry Newman.  Archivists in Birmingham, England had worked on this project for four years, taking high-quality images of John Henry Newman’s unpublished writings on theology, education, and philosophy. This alone was only the first part of the project, which was completed recently. The next part of the project involves uploading nearly thirty terabytes of information to the website being operated by this Pittsburgh-based group, called the National Institute for Newman Studies. The Institute itself was founded in 2007 after the founder of the national Newman Association of America died in 2000, leaving behind a sizable number of Newman’s works. Since its founding, this article reports that scholars from around the world visit the center to study their collections. Most recently, the National Institute for Newman Studies launched the Scholars Common, a platform where researchers can access Newman’s published works, letters, and diaries among other materials. When this project is completed, meaning when all of Newman’s works have been digitized and made available via this platform, scholars anywhere will be able to access these collections without having to travel to Pittsburgh, PA.[1]
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The reason this article caught my attention, was because it reminded me so much of Roberto Busa, an Italian Jesuit priest credited with creating the Index Thomisticus for roughly thirty years, between the 1940s and 1970s. Though Busa was the mastermind behind this project, which was an early form of computational linguistics and an inspiration to the modern field of Digital Humanities, the project’s work was in fact conducted by Italian women, hired from surrounding areas. Furthermore, the Index Thomisticus was digitized on the internet in 2005, adding yet another parallel between the two projects. It is fascinating to me, how roughly seventy years after the Index Thomisticus project began, a similar project about a religious scholar is being conducted primarily through digital media in Pittsburgh.[2]

[1] Sarah Schneider, “A Pittsburgh Group Dedicated to a 19th Century Cardinal Digitized His Life’s Work,” 90.5 WESA: Pittsburgh’s NPR News Station, October 16, 2017. http://wesa.fm/post/pittsburgh-group-dedicated-19th-century-cardinal-digitized-his-lifes-work#stream/0. (Accessed 10/26/17).

[2] Melissa Terras, entry on “For Ada Lovelace Day – Father Busa’s Female Punch Card Operatives,” Melissa Terras’ Blog, entry posted October 15th, 2013, http://melissaterras.blogspot.com/2013/10/for-ada-lovelace-day-father-busas.html (Accessed 10/26/17).