From Stephanie Richardson
I am just getting started with revitalizing my church's library. It is a beautiful space, but for years has been a dumping ground for books that people want to get rid of - resulting in a collection of books that no one wants to read. My first step will be a huge purge of the collection and start obtaining books that are relevant to our congregation.
I am looking for help with several specific things. I realize that many of these questions are very broad and I appreciate any wisdom and insight you can share with me.
1) Does anyone have a mission or vision statement their church library that they could share? How about written guidelines for purging old or obtaining new books? I plan to work closely with the pastors for advice as I build our collection, but I would like to have a process in place that doesn't require them to approve every book (they don't have time for that!). I fortunately have a couple thousand dollars to start with, so I am very excited to start building a great collection.
2) For those of you that use an online catelogue system, what do you love/hate about the system you use. I have looked at TinyCat, but I am a little confused about how to shelve my books in a way that makes them easy to find physically while using the TinyCat system. (I haven't spent a lot of time studying it, so maybe I've just missed it). Other than TinyCat, what else is out there?
3) What activities and/or programs has gotten your church interested in the library? I am hoping to start some programs that engage kids and encourage adults to put down their phone and pick up a book. :)
4) Other than this website, are there any other great resources/communities that I should connect with as I am working on this ministry?
Thank you all!
Grace and Peace,
Stephanie Richardson
Replies
For those working on organizing a church library, I just ran across this from the American Libraries Association. Guides and Resources for Church Libraries. https://libguides.ala.org/SettingUpaLibrary/ChurchSynagogueLibrary
REGARDING SEARCHING: It has been a very long time since I did this. When I was working and re-organizing the NW Graduate School of Ministry (now the Bakke Graduate University) I needed a good search mechanism for the PhD candidates. I developed an MS ACCESS database which would capture the Mark data for each book. I would download records, often from the Library of Congress (Mark Format), and paste them into a single element [call it anything] of the record; this would then be searchable in Access with all the subject information and notes as well as title, author, and dates. It took some time, but there was now no need to figure out how to search something, and find it. Just go the the front end, select the element to search and search on any word. If it is included, it appears. Yes, it took some time to set it up, but it was great for me and for students needing the special notes information. One can buy MS Access pretty cheap now, and/or, as part of MS OFFICE Pro Plus. I would recommend you stick with version 2021 of Office Pro Plus which includes Access and 7 other office products (others, newer, do not keep Access or Publisher). Access alone is OK too, and now cheap if you search around...those are legitimate keys being sold for the downloadable software direct from Microsoft. The firms are just unloading unused KEYs they bought for theirs, or other firms.
re. 2) -- check this out. Readerware, which I recommended has shut down. I believe it was because all the databases used kept changing things so the Readerware could not continue to download records from the various catalogs. This new site give recommendations for alternatives to Readerware. https://www.capterra.com/p/80142/Readerware/alternatives/ This site also has an additional link for other software.
re. 4) -- The Church and Synagogue Library Association, which had trouble a number of years ago, has resurfaced here: https://www.cslainfo.org/ I believe it is handled now by the Congregational group. In the past it had its own monthly or quarterly publication which stopped publication. They now apparently have paid staff for the non-profit organization.
The Association of Christian Libraries can be found here: https://acl.org/christian-library-consortium/clc-members/ This is one of the professional group of Librarians. The other Academic/Seminary librarians you will find here: https://www.atla.com/ The latter has a huge database of libraries similar to WorldCat for theological libraries and collections.
I used LibraryThing but am disappointed to say that one cannot search by subject and that was a particular requirement/request from the rector and so I must start anew--suggestions anyone? I'm looking for something as easy and cheap as LibraryThing but where one may search by subject???
I recall that in the mission statement I included that the library was was a living entity and archive of the ancestral soul of our parish or something like that, we started a newsletter, and we also added a chess table.
One of my favorite things about our library is the old books that include highlighted and underlined passages (only with a used book may one engage in such unintentional collaboration) and inscriptions to previous priests and parishioners inside where they were gifted for anniversaries, graduations, etc. (old books serve as spontainious memorials).
I am still learning myself, though this month marks a year since I began...and unfortunatly i thought i was just about finished with the hardest part when i recently learned that one cannot search by subject in LibraryThing.
Someone please offer Stephani Richardson and I both something easy to use for both librarians and patrons, with subject search (rather than only author or knowing at least one word in the title), that is preferably free!!!
What do you mean, you can't search by subject? Do you mean search the catalog for books about a certain subject, or you can't search the website for something?
I mean one cannot search the catalog for a book about a particular subject. For example, on the Transfiguration of Christ. It will only show books in your catalogue that have the words "Transfiguration" and "Christ" in the title or in the author's name. Tags may be added to each book which serve to indicate the subjects that particular book covers, but no matter which books have "Transfigruation of Christ" tags added, the only books it will show to the searcher are those with the words "Transfiguration" and "Christ" in the title or author's name. I hope I have explained this well....I need a platform to load our catalogue onto that will let someone type in "dingbats" and every book that mentions "dingbats" will be pulled up, even if the term "dingbat" is no where in the title or author's name.
That's really odd. When I do a search in our catalog for "Christ", it shows a lot of results (predictable!) and as I scan down the list, while most of them do have "Christ" in either the title, or our tags, or both, I do see any number which do not have the word "Christ" in the title or in the tags or in the (LibraryThing-generated) subject field.
I hope you can find something that works! Have you contacted LT about this? I have found them to be pretty helpful with issues I have and I'm curious what they would say about it...
That is odd! I tried searching for the Holy Spirit as my test subject to search and it only pulled up books with Holy Spirit in the title. Perhaps because I have not made my own tags? Or perhaps because I was simply typing Holy Spirit into the search bar above our catalog listings...at the risk of asking a stupid question: were you searching in another location? I've not tried from the POV other than administrator.
1. I don't have a mission statement that would help you. If you could, it would be good for you to have a committee put together from the deacons or elders or both along with one of the ministers (youth too.)
1.a. Building a collection; a few thousand dollars will not help much, if you need reference works, but otherwise it will help to fill gaps. I would first look to the ministers and their collections, asking them which books of theirs they found best for their work...and maybe even get theirs into your library. I'd also work with them to find out the works they will cite in their sermons.
2. I used Readerware for the church library; other programs for a grad school and prison. Readerware is good for downloading title and book information from the Library of congress, Powells, et al. (you might have to correct dates though.) You need Internet connection for that however. We found the issue was that it didn't print book labels for bookcards or spines (we built our own system for that, which tied in with Readerware.) I might have a copy (but the guy who wrote it has died, and Readerware sometimes updates, and it would likely need some changes.)
3. I suspect activities / programs will eventually present themselves as you get people to help with the library.
4. There are several other library associations that offer help, and just a search of this string "church library organization listings" will help you find them. Sometimes your own denomination headquarters has a group of librarians and will be very helpful. You didn't say if you were Christian or Jewish or something else. I'm aware Universalists/Unitarians often have their libraries too.
We use LibraryThing. The basic website account is free; if you also want its affiliate patron interface (called TinyCat) there is a fee, which is based in the size of your collection. We have been quite pleased with it. There are occasional issues but their customer support is excellent; I always get a response within 24 hours (and often less).
www.librarything.com
-
1
-
2
of 2 Next