News
Jumping Aboard “The Ark”
August 24, 2009
Owners and users report innovative approaches and interesting discoveries from using this powerful new software tool that can search through 55,000 pages of issues from the first decades of the Christian Science Sentinel and The Christian Science Journal.
With enhanced ability to search the earliest issues of The Christian Science Journal and the Christian Science Sentinel, owners of The Ark software program are reporting new and innovative approaches to historical research.
The program allows one to perform simple and complex searches of the Journals from 1883 through 1922, and Sentinels from 1898 through 1922. Each search covers virtually the entire content of the periodical, from titles of articles to specific words within articles and testimonies, names of authors, even the table of contents, church and practitioner listings, and items of interest. One can then print out the result, e-mail it, save it as a PDF image, or copy the text into a word-processing program. The program also allows users to read through the periodicals, including the Christian Science Quarterly from 1904 through 1922, consecutively, page by page.
Ark users report some of their early discoveries:
• A Reader in a Church of Christ, Scientist, said she uses The Ark every week to help prepare the readings for the Wednesday evening testimony meeting. She said she looks up Bible passages to see how early Christian Science workers commented on them. Recently, she said, she searched for Jesus’ invitation to his disciples to “come and dine.”
• One New England Church of Christ, Scientist, discovered the date when their branch church was first listed in The Christian Science Journal. A Christian Science Society found information about the history of their society and their town, and used this in a presentation at their centennial celebration.
• A Christian Science practitioner reported that she has found many inspiring articles to send to patients.
• One researcher looked up all the articles written by various pioneer workers, such as Annie Knott.
• Another church member uses The Ark as a companion tool as she reads the weekly Christian Science Bible Lesson. In addition to reading the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, she says she runs two computer programs — Concord and The Ark — to explore terms that come up in the Lesson and see how they were discussed by some of the early Christian Scientists. One recent search examined the “twenty-four elders” from the book of Revelation.
• One Christian Science Reading Room librarian who is praying about weather for her church, searched The Ark for all the references to the words from a hymn, “In atmosphere of Love divine” (hymn 144 in the Christian Science Hymnal).
• One church member studied some of the poems in the early Christian Science periodicals — an easy task, since an Ark search can focus on types of material, such as poems, editorials, news, articles by Mary Baker Eddy, and testimonies of healing.
• Another user wanted to find out when her great-grandmother was listed as a Christian Science practitioner in the Journal.
Users say they enjoy the way search results show up on The Ark as PDF images of the original pages of these periodicals so they can be read consecutively, page by page, as if one were reading through the original bound volume. An innovative and helpful feature is that at the bottom of each sheet The Ark prints the source of the material being printed — the volume and issue numbers and date of the item from the Journal or Sentinel.
Said one happy owner who is giving The Ark programs out as gifts to friends: “I just feel that if Christian Scientists could get into the meat of historic research through The Ark, it would greatly widen their concept of Christian Science.”
The Ark software program was created by Ark Publications, LLC, and is sold by Longyear Museum. It operates from a flash drive or from connecting to the Ark Publications website from any computer connected to the Internet.
