Every book, periodical and reference work in this library is transcribed from a scan of an early original printing. Reading from the original means the text you see is the text readers saw when it first appeared, before later editions revised, abridged, or re-set it.
A word on what we mean by 'first edition.' Where we can, we use the first printing of a book. Where that was not available, we use an early edition from the same period. For Ellen White's books, that means an edition printed during her lifetime. Either way, it is an original printing, not a later reprint.
Online archives
Most of these scans come from three public archives that have done the patient work of photographing and preserving early print. We are grateful for their work and encourage you to visit them.
- adventistarchives.orgThe Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. Home to the periodicals, yearbooks, and official records of the church.
- adventistdigitallibrary.orgThe Adventist Digital Library, a collaborative collection of books, pamphlets, and periodicals gathered from Adventist institutions around the world.
- archive.orgThe Internet Archive, a nonprofit library of millions of digitized books and periodicals, including early printings held by university libraries.
Books scanned by AdventAI
Some first editions are not available online. In these cases, AdventAI has purchased the original printed book and scanned it ourselves.
From scan to text
Each page image is transcribed by AdventAI and assembled into a readable edition, keeping the original page and paragraph numbering so that quotations can be traced back to the printed source.