The Digital Library is proud to announce a new partnership between Villanova University and the Sisters of St. Basil the Great.

After the legal agreement was signed at the beginning of 2011, I had the pleasure of presenting to the Sisters on the project: to scan documents and other materials from their history, including realia (three-dimensional objects from real life) for the purposes of scholarship and digital preservation.   These items are vital to an understanding of a major aspect of the life of Ukrainian Catholics in the Philadelphia region.

It is greatly anticipated that this project will be of benefit to a greater understanding of this bit of Church history and for a wider understanding of the contributions this particular order of women religious and the Eastern Catholic tradition generally, have made and continue to make to both Catholic heritage and local history. Working to document and disseminate primary source material from particular ethnic communities for future generations of scholars in Catholic studies and allied disciplines widens the scope of Catholica which we have undertaken to preserve. Not only because it is relatively unique, but because it adds to the mosaic of materials from a variety of backgrounds which would otherwise remain in greater relative obscurity.