One of our new Church Librarians Network members lives in the Nashville area, Lydia Neeley. She and her pastor are seriously talking about a vision for revitalizing the library in their church. She came to our Middle Tennessee librarians gathering on April 20, 2024. She shared what they are doing and asked the rest of us for input. She could not write fast enough!
What are your suggestions? Something interesting happened to our group while we made suggestions. The rest of our group that day serve church libraries that are many years old. We all got ideas from this discussion for us to consider for our “older” libraries.
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My first response is "where is the library?" I am part of Evangelical Church Library Association and we help librarians with something like this. We moved and have joined a new church and the library was in a utility closet (or the size of one). I started working with the librarian and the pastor and the library is being moved to another building to a room that is sort of a classroom. However, there is a lot of space and most of the shelves have been moved. I won't know about the boxes until tomorrow. My other advice would be to weed books that are more than 10 years old. Most of the books in the boxes will not go on the shelf as some are dated and old looking. Look at the print of the books, if it is small, older people can't read it that well. It doesn't mean that everything has to be large print but the newer books are a larger font.
Find younger people who are willing to work in the library. They can refile the books, check to make sure that the books are checked in correctly, etc.
Find little decorations that can go on the shelf with the books. Make sure there is room on either side of the shelf. Looking crowded is boring and discouraging for someone to grab a book to check out. A small pot of ivy on top of the bookshelf makes things look more inviting as well.
Find a place to display books that are current. What is the pastor preaching about on Sunday? Did he refer to a book? See if you have that book and display it. Kids will pick up books that look interesting when they are on display.
Just a few ideas.