An outcome of the World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh, 1910, the MRL was founded in 1914 by John R. Mott in connection with the Foreign Missions Conference of North America. In 1929 the MRL was housed in the Brown Memorial Tower of Union Theological Seminary, its Board of Trustees composed of FMC-NA (later DOM-NCCCUSA) and UTS members. In 1967 its unique collections, heritage of Ecumenical Protestantism, were transferred into the care of the UTS Library.
The MRL contains collections of named missionaries' papers and institutional records within geographic divisions:
