It occurred to me this past weekend that one of the ways in which the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies can serve the Southern Baptist community, as well as the larger Baptist world and even the broader scene of English-speaking Evangelicalism, is through online reviews of books that specifically relate to Baptist history. One of the ways in which the publishing world has been impacted in the past twenty years or so, a time of massive change for that world, has been in the role played by book reviews. Book reviews often appear in journals or magazines anywhere up to a year, or even more, after the book being reviewed has been published. Given the way books are marketed today though, this often results in the book review playing no substantial role in the sale of the book.
Given the resources of the worldwide web, one of the ways around this dilemma is to publish online reviews as soon as possible after the book has been published, as a number of e-journals are already doing. So, in the next week or so the Center hopes to initiate such a venture and try to review a book every couple of weeks or so. There will be a link provided on the home page to see the book reviews both current and past. Do check back regularly to see what is being recommended in the exciting field of Baptist history and ancillary fields of church history.