Free Resources
Archives in Transition Toolkit
Whether a congregation is at the beginning of its journey, in mid-life, or coming to fulfillment, its Archives is the heart and soul of the congregation’s memory. As the numbers of women religious decrease in the United States, planning for keeping the legacy of Sisters alive is urgent.
The Religious Archives in Transition Toolkit is a resource devoted to guiding archivists and religious leaders through the process of assessing their current archival reality, selecting an appropriate future home for their collection, and preparing their archive, physically and intellectually, to move to that future home.
The toolkit was made possible by the following:
For more information on the state of women religious archives, see the following links to a study conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) in 2022.
Sourced from Religious Sisters Archives, Mark M. Gray, Ph.D. and Sr. Patricia Wittberg, SC, Ph.D.
Yankton Benedictine Sisters
Members of Women Religious Archives Collaborative (WRAC) help the Sisters prepare to transition their collection.
Sisters of the Precious Blood
Archivist Sarah Aisenbrey
Yankton Benedictine Sisters
Members of Women Religious Archives Collaborative (WRAC) help the Sisters prepare to transition their collection.
Directories
Women Religious History Sources: A Digital Guide to Repositories in North America
This resource updates the 1983 guide Women Religious History Sources, for researchers in the digital age. Organized alphabetically by geographic state or province and cross-referenced by post-nomial for each community, this guide provides contact information for repositories of women religious archives collections in the United States and Canada. The location of the archives listed here does not necessarily limit its scope to that city and/or state; please directly inquire about the full scope of the collection directly with the individual archive.
ACWR Archival Consultants Directory
ACWR supports the preservation and legacy of women religious by providing a directory of expert consultants to assist congregations with archival management and transitions. Congregations are encouraged to vet these professionals for their specific needs.
Social Justice & Archives
Over the past decade, archivists have begun to reckon with their positions as caretakers of materials that uphold white supremacy, racism, homophobia, classicism, and other causes of systemic injustice in society. The archives of women religious give voice to those historically silenced by inequity, including women, children, and immigrants, who were served by Catholic sisters' ministries throughout history. The following free resources give archivists tools to examine their places in these systems and offer guidance on how to work with the marginalized communities their collections represent.
The following free resources demonstrate how women religious organizations have consulted their archival records to address challenging histories.
Native American Boarding Schools
Catholic Truth and Healing: Catholic-Operated Native Boarding Schools in the United States, pre-1978
Compiled by a group of archivists, historians, and concerned Catholics, the List of Catholic-operated Native Boarding Schools in the United States, pre-1978, represents the first and most comprehensive source for information on Native boarding schools that were overseen or staffed by the Catholic Church before 1978. The purpose of the list was assemble data to serve as a resource to help boarding school survivors, their descendants, Tribal Nations, and the Church itself navigate the history of Catholic involvement with Native boarding schools.
NHPRC Grant
In 2023-2024, ACWR oversaw a $75,000 Collaborative Archives Implementation grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to establish a standardized model for Catholic institutions to organize and share archival records of Native American boarding schools. This project ensures these historical records are accessible to impacted Native families and communities to foster transparency and collective understanding of the forcible assimilation of Indigenous children.
Outcomes of this project include the following resources:
Catholic-Operated Native Boarding School Collections Resource Guide contains 31 finding aids for collections spanning 26 schools across 15 states, covering nearly a third of all known Catholic-operated Native boarding schools (CTAH Website).
Grant Project Researcher Denise Gallo, Ph.D’s final report increases accuracy of existing research from CTAH, the Department of the Interior, and the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS). It also includes tools for using census and primary records for genealogical research.
Enslaved People
Catholic Religious Organizations Studying Slavery (CROSS)
Catholic Religious Organizations Studying Slavery (CROSS), was established in March 2021 by representatives of the Archdiocese of St. Louis and the Jesuit Slavery, History, Memory, and Reconciliation Project. Members of CROSS work to improve access to the records of the enslaved and those who enslaved them. In addition, they promote active engagement with this subject, encouraging discourse on the legacies of slavery in the United States, and advocating for institutional responses.