The Episcopal Church announced this week that its archive in Austin, Texas, will close for four months at the start of 2027 to facilitate the long-envisioned move to a new permanent location in Oakwood, Georgia. For researchers, that means time is short to submit pressing archival requests before the archives temporarily close on January 1. And for church planners, that means a logistical challenge is quickly approaching.
The Episcopal Church Archives has been housed in a leased warehouse in Austin since 2021 after previously occupying space at the Seminary of the Southwest for about 60 years. The collection is vast—about 9,400 cubic feet, plus 500 linear feet of library and reference books—all of which will need to be boxed up soon and transported to the new location, about 50 miles from Atlanta.
The physical move is planned for three weeks in February. Then, the focus will shift to setting up the materials in the new facility’s 14,000 cubic feet of storage, which is a 40 percent increase over the previous storage space.
