The Bible Society of Brazil’s Museum. Photo: BSB/Eduardo César (BRA03DJ-14.JPG)

Instructions for depositing new Scripture publications: The UBS Scripture archive formerly housed at the American Bible Society library in New York has been transferred to the Museu da Biblia, Sociedade Biblica do Brasil in Barueri, Brazil. The Bible Museum in Brazil is now the second official archive of UBS. From January 1, 2007, two copies of all new Scripture publications that would formerly have been sent to the library in New York should be sent to Brazil to be added to the UBS collection there. Please address packages to: Erni Walter Seibert Sociedade Bíblica do Brasil Avenida Ceci, 740 - Tamboré - Barueri - SP ZIP CODE 06460-120 – Brasil The Bible Society of Brazil wishes to continue the established system as seamlessly as possible. Thank you for your co-operation with this important endeavour. The standing order for a single copy of all new Scripture publications also to be sent to the library of the British and Foreign Bible Society in Cambridge remains unchanged. Please send all new Scripture publications to: Bible Society’s Library Cambridge University Library West Road Cambridge CB3 9DR England

BRAZIL — A new Bible library of more than 17,000 items, the largest of its kind in the southern hemisphere, formally opened last month in Barueri, in São Paulo, southern Brazil.

The library, which has its home in the Bible Museum of the Bible Society of Brazil (BSB), consists mainly of the United Bible Societies collection which was administered and housed until recently by the American Bible Society in New York.

With the move of the collection from New York, the new library takes over the accompanying role as one of the two deposit libraries for all the new Bible translations published by UBS, the other one being the Bible Society collection at Cambridge University Library. (See Instructions for depositing new Scripture publications)

At the opening ceremony, on October 17, the cutting of the ribbon was performed by Jacquelyn Sapiie, ABS’s Library Services Supervisor, and the Rev Dr Rudi Zimmer, Executive Director of the BSB, the one a representative of the collection’s old home, the other of its new location in a splendid, architecturally innovative Bible Museum and events centre opened just three years ago (see World Report 387/26). Among the civic dignitaries at the opening were the Governor of São Paulo, Claudio Lembo, and Rubens Furlan, the Mayor of the city of Barueri.

“The Bible Museum will now be a reference point for everyone involved or interested in Bible translation, as well as for linguists in general,” said Dr Zimmer. “Christians and other interested parties will be able to appreciate copies of translations into languages that they have never even imagined existed.”

The library has Bibles in more than a thousand languages, as well as rare scholarly editions such as the Hebrew-Latin Bible of 1546 and the Biblia Sacra Vulgata edition of 1669. But as well as antique editions of Scripture and the latest translations, the collection has biblical books and periodicals of all kinds (reference books, theology books and devotional literature) as well as associated audio material, DVDs, videos, CDs, photographs and more.

In a letter to Dr Zimmer on the occasion of the opening, the Rev Dr Miller Milloy, the General Secretary of UBS, said it was fitting that the second official archive of UBS should be in Brazil. He said that the BSB distributed more Bibles than any other Bible Society and that, in many respects, the southern hemisphere was the new home of the Christian faith. “The growth and strength of the Church is now focused more in the south than the north,” said Dr Milloy, “and Brazil epitomises that growth and vitality which encourages us all.” He paid tribute to Dr Erní Seibert, the BSB’s Communications Secretary, who, he said, had played an important role in managing the transfer of the archives from New York.

UBS decided in 2004 that its repository of Scriptures which had been housed in New York since 1967 should be moved. The BSB was approached because it had opened its stunning new Museu da Biblia a year earlier. The formal agreement to the transfer was signed in August 2005. Well before the agreement was concluded, however, ABS library staff began planning the move by identifying the books that would go, putting them into their language groups and preserving the shelf order. Dr Seibert spent a week in New York with ABS staff in October 2005 determining the best way to handle the transfer and to maintain continuity with ABS’s administration of the collection once it was located in Brazil. Some 11,000 volumes were transferred and the collection grows by approximately 500 volumes per year. 

In April 2006 Dr Seibert returned to New York with Lourival Pereira, the librarian in São Paulo. They spent a week with the ABS library staff going over the procedures for cataloguing, shelving and maintaining the collection, and learning how to produce the annual Scripture Language Report (see World Report 401/1, April/May 2006).

An active program designed to draw attention of a wide audience to the Museum is already in hand. In June the Museum hosted a Forum of Biblical Studies which drew an audience of more than 200 to hear six papers on Bible translation, and the BSB is developing a special web site devoted exclusively to the Bible Museum which will include an online catalogue of the library collection. The library itself is open for personal visits by the public, by previous appointment, from 9.00am to 5.00pm, from Tuesdays to Sundays. (WR 408/13-01/02.07) [2 photos]