Matching Funds for Digitization Project

A generous benefactor has put up $1,000 of matching funds for donations raised through the end of this calendar year. Please help us to maximize our ability to digitize early modern texts in theology by contributing to our fundraising campaign. The opportunity to double your donation ends on December 31, so please don’t delay!

For more about our digitization efforts, check out the video below:

And peruse some of the first fruits here.

Announcing Fall 2014 Colloquium Lineup

actasynodination00syno_0485We’re happy to announce the Fall 2014 Junius Institute Colloquium series produced in collaboration with the doctoral program at Calvin Theological Seminary.

First up is Michael Lynch, a doctoral student at Calvin Theological Seminary, who will be presenting on “Early Modern Hypothetical Universalism: Reflections on the Status Quaestionis and Modern Scholarship.” The colloquium will be held in the Covenant Room at Calvin Theological Seminary on Friday, September 12, 2014, from 1pm-3pm.

Other topics in this Fall’s series include the institute’s namesake, Franciscus Junius, as well as the Puritan Thomas Goodwin and John Milton.

Free the Rare Books!

If PRDL had a rallying cry it would be “Free Rare Books!” Now with our fundraising campaign for the Junius Institute integrated into PRDL and the crowd-funding site Razoo, we have a mechanism to “Free the Rare Books!” This 4 minute video clip summarizes where PRDL has been and where we would like to go.

Please consider passing this information on to a friend or colleague who might be interested in the PRDL or has never utilized these resources. It is our user community that not only inspires and encourages us to keep providing innovative tools and resources to study theology, history, and philosophy, but also fuels and supports the mission to broaden access to digital sources to global academic and also church communities.

If you would like your academic institution to partner with the Junius Institute and its projects, please feel free to contact me for more information here.

100k And Beyond


Reflecting on Jordan’s post regarding the milestones PRDL hit today, David Sytsma mentioned that since 2011, PRDL has connected over 158,000 visitors from 175 countries to over 78k titles in 100k volumes, from 5,000 authors … for free.

This tool has enabled students, scholars, and pastors from universities, institutions, and seminaries around the world and from many confessional perspectives to do their research more conveniently and effectively. We could not have hit this milestone without the generous contributions of time and resources of our user community and donors. Thank you to all who have contributed, edited, used, promoted, and donated. And most importantly, this site is due to the tireless efforts of the PRDL’s moderator, David Sytsma, its executive board, and its contributing editors. Thank you all for making this possible! PRDL truly is a labor of love. It’s hard to believe that it started out just a few years ago among several doctoral students and a professor, contemplating the need to compile and disseminate sources.

PRDL is fueled by a commitment to a return to the sources for a closer reading and evaluation of viewpoints in the early modern reformations and post-reformation eras. But what makes PRDL truly unique is that we are not subscription based or controlled by a publishing house, rather we are driven by the interests and support of our users. Our goal is to help students, scholars, pastors, and seminarians engage the sources of the early modern period both to understand the past and better assist the present. Students and scholars from developing and even closed countries have thanked us for this work that brings unprecedented resources to regions that have little or no exposure to this era of history or where the costs associated with physical access are prohibitive. It is our hope to continue in this endeavor to make rare books more accessible to a global community of scholars than has been traditionally the case. With your help, I look forward to extending and expanding the sources found in the PRDL through our digitization initiative in conjunction with Hekman Library. Because we can digitize more effectively and safely than current industry standards, over the next year the Junius Institute has an opportunity to digitize 70,000 pages from 60 rare works spanning 1589-1775 housed in the Hekman Library at Calvin College. This represents just 1% of the collection.

By using the Razoo website, we are able to accept donations of any size for this project. You can find out more about this digitization effort as well as a prospectus of works in phase 1 here. The brief clip embodies the purpose and goals of the Junius Institute: “free rare books” and “free the rare books!”

PRDL Hits Significant Milestones

The Post-Reformation Digital Library (PRDL) hit a couple of significant milestones today. With the addition of Emmanuel Perez de Quiroga, O.F.M. (fl. 1721), we have reached 5,000 authors.

And with the addition of a number of items from John Calvin’s expansive body of work, PRDL now includes over 100,000 total volumes.
PRDL5000Congratulations and thanks are due to the community of contributors and supporters of these efforts, all of which have been pursued pro bono thus far.

Join us in celebrating these achievements, and please consider supporting PRDL and the Junius Institute to make the creation and maintenance of these kinds of tools sustainable today!