Collection
The Michael Bourdeaux Research Center houses the library and archives, beckoning scholars to explore Keston's press clippings, pamphlets, reports, manuscripts, bibliographies, photographs, and posters along with nearly 9,000 books and periodicals in English, Russian, German, Polish and other languages. Rare items include autographed titles by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and opera singer Galina Vishnevskaia, and a Russian 2-volume Doktor Zhivago released for its propaganda value by a French press that never existed.
The Center’s walls feature Keston collection art and photographs, including a painting by Russian dissident artist Yuri Titov titled "Christ over Moscow," drawings of Saint Petersburg avant garde artists - members of the Hermitage group, a prerevolutionary map of the Moscow Kremlin, and photographs of Dr. Michael Bourdeaux and the underground publishing house "Christian" in the Soviet Union.
The facility contains three computers with Internet access, a printer, a Zeutschel zeta Comfort overhead book scanner, and an Epson V850 Pro flatbed scanner.
The Research Center’s namesake, Rev. Dr. Canon Michael Bourdeaux, founded the Keston Institute and began the collection with the first documents he acquired while an Oxford University exchange student in the Soviet Union.
Keston Digital Archive
The Keston Digital Archive contains digital copies of photographs, documents, manuscripts, posters, prints, Keston Institute and Samizdat publications, and newspaper articles from the Keston Archive. To access the digital collection go to Digital Archive Landing Page.
Additional Resources
The Baylor Archival Research Database (BARD), which is powered by CuadraStar, is a keyword-searchable gateway to find archival research materials at the Keston Center in and our other special collections libraries.
OneSearch enables exploration of the holdings of the Keston Center and all of the Baylor Libraries. To scale your search to include only resources from the Keston Center, do the following:
- Click this link to access the advanced search options of OneSearch
- Select Library Catalog from the options at the top of the search interface
- Click the arrow next to the word Library Catalog that will appear and then select Keston Center from among the options
- Add any search filters to narrow your search
- Click Search to locate materials available in the Keston Center