The Evangelical-Lutheran Church in South Africa: an introduction to its archival resources held at the Lutheran Theological Institute (LTI) Library, and the challenges facing this archive (Part Two).

Abstract

The challenges confronting the LTI Archive are the subject of Part Two of this series of articles. To recap, the first part of this instalment gave an insight into the evolution of the LTI Archive in the context of the history of the Lutheran church in South Africa. The archival management aspect of the documentation created during the formative period and until the present will be the focus of this paper. A plethora of issues will be looked at. These include, inter alia, the building holding the collection from a preservation point of view and the measures currently underway to safeguard this ecclesiastical heritage, considering that mission archives such as this one hold information that is important from not only an historical, but also an ethnological, sociological and theological point of view.