The Thomas Merton Center has four ongoing goals:

 -         Preserving the materials that comprise the Merton archives.

-         Facilitating on-site and remote access, as appropriate, to materials in the archives for scholars, students and the general public.

-         Promoting use of the archives and Center, particularly by faculty and students of Bellarmine University.

-         Acquiring additional Merton and Merton-related materials as they become available through gift or public sale.

 Once again achievements have been made in all of these areas:

Preservation:

-         A small group of the most unique and vulnerable pieces in the collection have been treated by a paper conservator so as to better ensure their preservation. These included a handwritten version of Merton’s poem “For My Brother…,” the handwritten copy of his monastic vows, his handwritten commitment to the hermit life, and a number of calligraphies and other pieces.

-         A project to re-house non-book secondary literature about Merton continues.

-         The Center’s holding of typescripts have been rehoused into better archival enclosures.

Access:

-         An on-line database has been created of the Center’s holdings of manuscript material – manuscripts of books, essays and poems by Merton.

-         A database of non-book secondary literature about Merton is being compiled in conjunction with the project to re-house this material.

-         The tables of contents for all volumes of both The Merton Seasonal and The Merton Annual are now available on the web site.

-         The Center continues to keep a running bibliography of new works appearing by and about Merton, and this is published quarterly in the Merton Seasonal.

Promotion:

-         Statistics for the use of the archives show a slight reduction in the numbers of visitors 2,729 (2,939), and telephone calls 1,083 (1,197), but a continuing increase in the number of both long 1278 (1164)  and short 3,441 (3,182) reference inquiries. The greater part of these inquiries are handled by e-mail. (These figures are for Jan. – Dec. 2008. Figures in brackets are for the same period in 2007.)

-         A wide variety of groups continue to come to the Center for talks introducing the life and thought of Merton or meetings, including two Merton Elderhostels a year in the Spring and Fall.

-         The Center has also been involved in assisting in a number of publication projects as well as book and journal publishers requiring access to images or permissions, especially for publications relating to the 40^th anniversary of Merton’s death. This included a section on PBS’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly about Merton that can be viewed on their website: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/november-21-2008/thomas-merton/1378/

-         The second annual Merton lecture in Black History month exploring Merton’s thinking on Civil Rights, racial issues and other questions relating to democracy and social transformation was held in February. The lecture was given by Albert J. Raboteau who was also a guest on State of Affairs, broadcast live from Bellarmine. The 2009 lecture will be given by Barbara Holmes on February 19^th, and in 2010, by Father Bryan Massingale.

-         The Fall 2008 lecture series took as its theme Love and Truth. The speakers  for this series were Jim Douglass, Morris Berman and Joyce Hollyday. (The Douglass lecture had to be postponed due to electricity outages following hurricane force winds and has been rescheduled for March 2009.)

-         The photography exhibit “A Hidden Wholeness – The Zen Photography of Thomas Merton” was exhibited here in Louisville at the Mohammad Ali Center in the Spring, in the summer was shown at the American Benedictine Academy in Yankton, South Dakota, then in the Fall was exhibited in Atlanta and concluded the year at the Special Collections Library of the University of Kentucky, Lexington.

-         Paul has been serving as Program Chair for the 11^th ITMS Conference to be held in Rochester, NY in 2009 and also took over as Acting Treasurer of the ITMS in May 2008.

-         Paul and Mark both have had proposals accepted for 11^th ITMS conference to be held in Rochester in June 2009.

Acquisition:

-         Many new publications, including foreign translations, dissertations and other materials were added to the collection.

o       Of particular note were a number of early editions or translations of Merton’s work.

o       8 new theses and dissertations were added to the collection.

o       Copies of The Columbia Jester with articles, cartoons, and poems by Thomas Merton.

-         Marie Charron Correspondence: 40 pieces of correspondence, mimeographs etc., donated by the Charron family.

-         “Viewpoints,” a typescript that would eventually become No Man is an Island, containing extensive handwritten corrections, donated by Brother Patrick Hart, OCSO.

-         Drawing by Victor Hammer of “Hagia Sophia” donated by Brother Benedict Simmons.

-         Signed, limited edition of The Tower of Babel donated by Richard O’Donnell.

-         Letter to/from Archbishop Noser.

-         Musical settings of Merton’s poetry by Fr. Bryan B. Hays, OSB.

-         The Center acquired copies of 31 letters from Thomas Merton to the Abbot General of the Cistercian Order from the Cistercian Generalate in Rome.

-         The Center purchased an archive of correspondence, essays and photographs written/sent by Merton to Doris Dana.

-         The Center purchased twelve original watercolors by Thomas Merton’s father, Owen Merton.

-         The Center received a large donation from the heirs of Joseph Zarrella, who had worked in New York with Dorothy Day in the early years of the Catholic Worker Movement.  The collection contains a mostly complete run of Catholic Worker newspapers from 1933-1990.  In addition, there were photographs of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, and prints by artists Fritz Eichenberg and Ade Bethune.  These materials were re-housed in archival enclosures.

-         Four books used by Thomas Merton containing his marginalia:

o       A Composer's World, Horizons and Limitations by Paul Hindemith.

o       The Convivio of Dante Alighieri edited and translated by Philip H. Wicksteed.

o       A Translation of the Latin Works of Dante Alighieri. (London, 1904)

o       The Song Celestial, or Bhagavad-Gita translated from the Sanskrit text by Sir Edwin Arnold

-         Artifacts transferred to the Merton Center from Merton’s hermitage at Gethsemani including:

o       A Papal Blessing from Pope Paul VI.

o       A Shaker Tree of Life given to Merton by Edward Deming Andrews.

o       A crucifix made by Merton’s former novice Ernesto Cardenal.

o       Two Navajo rugs that Merton brought back from his trip to New Mexico in May 1968.