American Board Periodical Collection

American Board Periodical Collection

The American Board periodical collection was incorporated into the ARIT Istanbul (ARIT-I) Library in January 2011, when ARIT received the library of the Western Turkey Mission of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), one of the chief Protestant missionary agencies in the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The core of this collection includes a number of rare serials issued locally by the Board and its affiliates, as well as other American organizations.

In 2012-3, ARIT digitized and uploaded to its digital library two of the most important English-language journals published in Turkey at the beginning of the twentieth century: The Levant Trade Review, issued by the American Chamber of Commerce for Turkey and the Levant from 1911 to 1931, and The Orient, produced by the ABCFM’s Istanbul office between 1910 and 1923. The project continued in 2013-4 with the addition of the American Board’s long-running news bulletin Dear Friends (1924-1990s) to the online collection. Financial support for this undertaking—to make these crucial historical sources available internationally on the worldwide web—has been provided by a grant from the United States Department of State.

The links below provide access to major periodicals housed in the ARIT Istanbul Library’s American Board collection. Other serials in the Board holdings, especially single-issue items, are included in the American Board Pamphlet Collection.

1. “The Messenger for Children”
2. Bulletin of the Near East Society
3. Samokov News
4. The Orient
5. The Levant Trade Review
6. Dear Friends
7. Alma Mater