Christian Science Church officials announced plans June 6 to open a research library to house nearly 500,000 documents, 14,000 photographs, and 7,000 artifacts of church founder Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910). Scheduled to open in the spring of 2002, the Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity will be located in the newly renovated Christian Science Publishing Society building in Boston’s Back Bay area.
Modeled after U.S. presidential libraries, the facility will also feature exhibits and host public and academic forums. The project has a five-year budget of $50 million, half of which will go to refurbishing the site, while the other half will be used for programs, library operations, and a Web page.
According to the June 6 Boston Globe, the collection includes Eddy’s diaries, scrapbooks, poems, sermons, and notes, as well as correspondence with suffragist Susan B. Anthony, publisher William Randolph Hearst, and First Lady Ida S. McKinley. “It’s not just a religious [collection],” Christian Science Board of Directors Chair Virginia S. Harris told the paper. “It will speak to women scholars and to historians of journalism and medicine.”
Posted June 12, 2000.