My church is the location of Southeastern Baptist Seminary student cohorts. This is the third year, the leader of these cohorts asked the Enrichment Center Team to include the textbooks for a course that starts August 18. He asked us to add 16 books for the students to our collection. If the library you serve provides textbooks for students to check out, any suggestions for me and the growing number of churches, parishes, and synagogues who are starting to do such?
Thanks!
Morlee
Replies
Something like this could work in several ways below.
I was for a short time Library Director of the Northwest Graduate School of the Ministry (NWGS) and it received full US accreditation to the doctoral level in 1995. Its primary emphasis during this first decade was serving Northwest US pastors. Over the years it changed names and locations and is now the Bakke Graduate University in Dallas Texas.
During this time, I developed a course in Literary Research for the PhD level candidates. Many of the pastors/students were there at the library for a week, then back home to do their preaching and studying. It seemed best to give them a list of links to resources on the internet for their work, which I did.
What one will find is that most of the small seminaries have terribly limited resources for the major reference works needed for their research.
Here would be my suggestions.
A. Work with the schools' library to find out what major reference works they have, work with other churches to spread the buying around for major works, which would also help a pastor, and actually support the schools.
B. There are library consortia which do this, and they may be able to let you, as a church library, join and also share resources. Certainly I would hope the seminary(s) are members of such consortia. Here is a directory of library consortia:
https://liswiki.org/wiki/Alphabetical_List_of_Library_Consortia
C. Buying cheap. I was at the ALA program in Seattle, one year, and was able to buy the CD version of one of the important sets of references at a below cost price (the publisher didn't want to have to ship the things back, so they were unloading them at the conference.) Church libraries could, squeeze into the seminaries studies those internet programs which would be in line with their studies and might help along with finding ebook titles they need for study. Generally these can be the least expensive, and yet a very good and definate service to those pastors.
D. My former website is down so my Ministers bibliography (Linkography?) is no longer available, but if enough were interested I could possibly recreate it and update it for the group.
Brilliant, Paul! You are a wealth of knowledge and encouragement. May God continue to bless you as He has in the past.
Hi, Morlee,
Collection Development is one of my favorite parts of being a librarian. How did this turn out? Did the professor provide the books or did you have to purchase these expensive tomes? is this a recurring course or a one time thing? Now what happens to those SIXTEEN books??
I have so many questions! ;-)
The books are located on a wooden cart placed by the entrance. I answered your other questions in my longer comment today. Great questions!
I used to work at a university library and the collection development policiy wouldn't allow for purchase of textbooks because there were so many courses and students that the library couldn't have afforded it. If the library purchased books for one course, then to be fair it would have to be prepared to do the same for all of them. I would have to ask several questions. Is this a one time use or would it be for a longer term? What is the cost and can the library afford it? Textbooks are usually some of the most expensive books. Does the library have space for these materials? What is the policy for non-return of books? Is this material available digitally? Can it be linked from the library's catalog? The mission of the university library is to support the curriculum, but it's up to each library to determine the level of support.
Just asked Morlee how this turned out. Your questions were spot on. As a school librarian I had the same mission - support the curriculum.
I would guess the mission of the church library is not to support the seminary, but I don't know all the details. I might mention to them that this falls under the mission of the seminary's own library.
I agree totally but my church is the Middle TN location for 2 seminaries where students are in cohorts. One of our staff members is the coordinator of these cohorts for the seminaries in addition to his other duties as our Mobilization Pastor. Our church mission is love, grow, serve, and go. In our context these cohorts are also carrying out our church mission. This approach is a common practice these days in larger Southern Baptist churches. One of the reasons seminaries are using this approach is to give students classroom experience instead of only online courses when they live far away from seminaries. Most are pastors and ministers in churches in these locations. The mission of our church library aligns with our church mission: love, grow, serve, and go.
My originial question was just interested in how other churches who have cohorts involve the library. Perhaps there are very few of us that serve in churches that have connections with the seminaries.
This is the 3rd year we have been assisting our Mobilization Pastor by providing the textbooks. These courses rotate in a 3 year cycle so we now have all the books in a special place for the students in the library. My next step is to work with his assistant to place the books in the order the the course are offered. I want to make the books available to our church members and guests who are interested in digging deeper when the courses are not using specific books.
As we purchased books during this cycle, the work on the 2026 church budget was developed. The library has spent all the designated money that we have been spending in 6 years. Yes, we got ALOT of designated money whe our team became the leaders of the library. Now we have a line item amount in the budget so we will not be purchasing seminary books if asked in the future.
You are correct that some of the books are more expensive than what we usualy get, but I've been surprised that the majority are in the same price range of other books we purchase.
Thanks for the details. I'm glad your library can afford to do this. It's certainly goes with your church's mission
Rhonda
Excellent 🥰
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