Emily Belz is a staff writer for "Christianity Today" magazine. She emailed me the following:
“I'm writing about what happened to church cookbooks; do any churches still produce them? What is the story and timeline of their decline? Do librarians keep these archived?”
Click here to fill out her questionnaire.
Let's broaden her question to discuss cookbooks. Do you have cookbooks in your collection?
Replies
Emily sent us the link for the article she wrote about church cookbooks. She used the survey results that some of you gave to her.
Loaves and Casserole Dishes: Will Church Cookbooks Survive?
Way to go Church Librarians Network members!
At our library, we have a huge collection of ebooks, including Church cookbooks to search, peruse, and borrow; both shelf copy titles and ebooks actually. Checking out materials does not happen with this computer.
I love and use the cookbooks, adapting some of the recipes for better healthy eating. My favorites though are in the early part of the 20th century, before 1960. If you have the physical copy please put that on the shelf as well, or as we do putting them in a box set up for proper storage.
The computer we set up in the library allows for searching and downloading onto a library flash drive which is checked out. Upon return, we remove the ebooks borrowed so it is clean and ready for the next person. Flash drive on a lanyard with the church name and library in bright colors is a suggestion. We cannot recommend using an app to wipe the flash drive's empty space, though we do that with the computer.
We do not allow library guests the use the computer for the Internet, so the computer is offline completely.
Our Mennonite Church library has about 20 church cookboks from various denominations as well as cookbooks produced by Amish family lines, but then we Mennonites really like to cook. It is our feeling that food brings people together. Our cookbook collection gets reasonable use, especially in wintertime when we tend to be more homebound and looking for new things.
I feel like most of the younger generation uses the web and online apps for digital recipe storage. With that in mind, I think church cook books could be a great record of the history of the church, as well as a way for church members to connect with each other. I see it more as a social connection than a practical need.
It can also be a discussion opener with other churches in the area.
Our church has done two cookbooks over the years. We still have some of the last one for sale. Though we have cookbooks in our collection I now realize that we did not include our own. Maybe at the time it was to encourage members to buy the cookbooks instead of checking them out. It has been sometime since the last one was published so believe it should be made available for checkout, maybe this will interest some new folks to purchase the last ones.
Personally I do enjoy buying church cookbooks at thrift stores and have a nice variety. I often look through them especially at holidays and definitely use the recipes. I had not thought about including any others in our church library collection but need to rethink that.
I consider church cookbooks a written history of housewives. Which is a reason that I think they are falling out of style. Even ladies that stay home with their children these days are on the road more than they are in the home. It's a different world that what I grew up in. We keep the church cookbooks (only the ones our church has done) in the library as a historical record.
I am also the president of our local Friends of the Library. Local church cookbooks are VERY popular at our book sales. They always sell out fast! We price local church cookbooks at a minumum of $5 and up to much higher. Non-local church cookbooks are priced at $2. We do not have church cookbooks in our church library.
have a couple cookbooks but have never had anyone ask about them or check them out since I have been there Was thinking they could be purged
We did a cookbook years ago and there are still some in the library to be sold. I still have the original information at my new home in IN. I do have in my possession some church cookbooks as well as college students Mom's cookbooks. I don't use them a lot but they are fun to go through.