The Adventist Digital Library (ADL), located in the basement of the James White Library, has been working on a new website to digitally showcase Adventist historical material from archives, libraries and individuals across the world. According to their website, their mission is to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world through direct and unlimited access to these materials as well as current resources.
The ADL’s previous website was launched in 2015 by a consortium of partners committed to preserving and sharing the documentary heritage of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Fabio Batista, the manager of the Adventist Digital Library Consortium, stated that the project was created to digitize historical sources by and about Adventists and to provide free online access to those materials through a single searchable platform. “Through the collaborative efforts of Adventist institutions and academic libraries, the ADL was envisioned as a cooperative initiative that would expand access to sources on Adventist mission, theology, history, and culture while strengthening understanding of Adventist identity and faith.”
Though the website hosted an impressive catalog of material, Batista explained that the website soon became unable to sustain the amount of material that was going into it. “By the early 2020s, it became clear that the original ADL website’s repository software could no longer support the scale and ambitions of the growing digital library.” In 2021, the ADL board approved a move to a new website and repository system. Batista shared that the “ADL’s new website will feature a wealth of new material, including photos, digitized audio from cassette tapes and reel-to-reel, digitized VHS videos, exclusive documents from the Center for Adventist Research, and the Ellen G. White Document Files (WDF) collection—a compilation of clippings, papers and historical records on various topics.”
The ADL’s first strategic plan, approved in 2023, was written during this period of transition and uncertainty. Batista expressed that the time of this first plan proved both challenging and transformative for the ADL. It encountered significant technical obstacles that slowed progress toward launching the new digital library repository. The major turning point for this project came in 2025, when a private donor provided funds to help launch a new ADL website. With the ADL Board’s approval, the ADL adopted a dual-software approach. At the same time, generous support from the North American Division enabled ADL’s infrastructure to be hosted on NADcloud servers for free. This partnership enabled ADL to provide expanded technical infrastructure and digital preservation support to Adventist institutions that lack the funds to access these resources independently.
As a result, the ADL has grown beyond its original role as a single digital library and now serves as a collaborative infrastructure that provides software and services supporting Adventist heritage institutions throughout the process of digitization. Batista shared that with the ADL’s new collaborative focus, the ADL now operates under an “expanded vision statement and new name: the Adventist Digital Library Consortium.”
With the new website, the Adventist Digital Library Consortium will have moved one step closer to completing its mission to spread the gospel through digital media to the whole world for free. The website is slated to go live in November.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.