Collections
The Presbyterian Historical Society's collections include archival records, published materials, and artifacts documenting the history of the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition in America.
To help patrons locate materials, the society has created several catalogs.
In this section, you will find:
Calvin, the society's online library catalog
Sheppard, the society's tool for searching the following databases:
- Archives Database
- Foreign Missionary Vertical Files Index
- Biographical Vertical Files Index
- Congregation and Other Organization Vertical Files Index
- Hall's Index of American Presbyterian Congregations
- Museum Database
- Communion Tokens Database
Pearl Digital Collections are particularly focused on themes related to overseas and national mission work, ecumenical and interfaith activities, education, and social and political issues and activism. The repository includes digitized and born-digital records; manuscripts; images; publications, including rare books; sound recordings; and moving images. At this time, access is not provided to digitized congregation or mid council records and most born digital records.
Religious News Service Photographs Digitization Project. PHS is the recipient of a 2023 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Implementation grant to digitize 22,500 images, newspaper clippings, and related documents from the Religious News Service Photograph Collection.
Research Tools help you access the wealth of materials at PHS by providing more detailed descriptions than are found in our catalogs.
In this section, you will find:
Guides to Archival Collections
Many of the historic documents in our holdings have been donated by individuals and families who lived the history in those records, or by their descendants. In this section, you will find information about:
African American Leaders & Congregations Collecting Initiative
