Hello!
I am wondering if anyone has chosen to include any secular books in their libraries, and if so, what is the procedure that you followed?
Our pastor has highly recommended a secular book, written by a non-christian author. He believes the content is incredibly valuable.
We will be choosing to include it in our circulation, and will likely have more to follow, but we just want to make sure we're doing it well and with sensitivity.
Signage? Labels? What would you recommend?
Thank you!
Amber
Replies
We have lots of secular books in our library. We have an 8 member library committee who select books. We actively seek input from church members who request titles and sometimes donate ones they have read. Donated ones are evaluated by the committee and if not approved are given to the church rumage sale. Although I am a paid staff member all books are purcashed with donations so we are eager to carry books our readers request.
We do have secular books in our library, in the children's sections, non-fiction, and fiction sections. The criteria is that it has to have moral value, it cannot be contrary to Christian teaching (unless it is reference material, as I have a copy of the Koran and other materials available for scholarly understanding -- but not on the regular shelves). Children's books are pretty self-explanatory, but examples of non-fiction include cookbooks, biographies of note-worthy secular people, history books, and the works of secular philosphers. In fiction, I have some of the great classics and a few books that present important moral issues or historical significance and reflect a Christian worldview, even if they aren't specifically Christian. An example would be The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Richardson.
We don't have many secular books for adults, but we do have a good number of them in our J FIC (children's chapter books) collection and a few in our Picture Book collection.
We call them "Good Reads" and we have created a spine label indicating this, as well as an explanation of what they are and why we have them. They are books which we consider to be well-written, excellent stories, showing Biblical character qualities even though not written by a Christian author or from a Christian publisher. There are several reasons for this; one being that we struggle to find as much solid, excellent Christian fiction for children. However, we also want to help our people recognize the good, the true and the beautiful that can be found in "good reads". All readers, whether adults or children, can learn, whether consciously or not, from quality fiction. Personally, I'd rather have someone read really excellent "secular" fiction than poorly written "Christian" fiction.
We also have a Classics collection, which largely contains children's classics (for example, The Wind in the Willows; The Hobbit; Winnie-the-Pooh, and many more.
Thank you so much!
We have some secular books in the adult nonfiction section such as gardening, cookbooks,craft books, American history, a few biographies, etc., but we have very few in the adult fiction. There are more secular books in the children's area than in the adult section; including classics, books by popular children's authors, science books, search and find books, etc. Most of these books are also good for home schoolers. As long as the books are vetted, I think secular books are fine. I always make sure I research the author just to make sure I know what other books they have written and would not put one of their books in the library if they have other books that are inappropriate for my church. Our library is located by the doors that go out to the outside play area in our children's area. I feel that getting children to use the library is a good way to get parents to come. I was a librarian at an elementary school and for the longest time I did not feel there were many well written Christian books for children that could compete with secular children's books but I have seen what I consider great improvement in that area. For 2 years now, the library has been open one day a week for our church preschool. Many of the children enrolled are not church members or attenders. This past year we had a number of Ukranian families at the school and 5 of those families came every week to the library. This past Sunday the parents of one of those families were baptized so I feel the library played a small role in them becoming a part of our church family. She was the mother that checked out all of my cookbooks and gardening books for herself.
The part about researching authors is an area I'm struggling with now because there is an author (who is a good friend) who has a couple of good children's books in my library and one that he wrote for adults that is perfectly appropriate. However, while the book is a stand alone, he is writing a sequel. The second book, which he hasn't finished yet, has content that is totally not suitable. I hate the thought of pulling his first novel because it's really really good.. I am not concerned with his children's picture books, but I am considering a caution label on the adult novel about the sequel so that parishioners can understand why I am not carrying it in the library and make an informed choice before obtaining the sequel somewhere else. My friend was a Methodist minister at one point but he is not an agnostic or atheist with a lot of resentment towards religion. Since his novels are loosely based on his own life, the first novel deals with faith from the perspective he has as a young man. The sequel will take place, I believe, during the period when he rejected Christianity. (Please pray for him, btw - God knows who he is and this dividing factor between us is why we are not more than just friends).
Anyway, I have done the caution label with other books that I feel have very good content but otherwise have issues. For example, as a Catholic Church our beliefs regarding the life of the Blessed Mother are different from some of our Protestant brethren. I have a beautiful book on Women of the Bible, but the section on Mary talks about her having other children, which is not in line with Catholic belief. Rather than discard an otherwise beautiful book, I simply have a caution label on it.
This is great!
Before answering your question, I'm wondering whether you have a working definition of secular. We have lots of books in our library on ethical issues which may be considered secular depending on your defintion. They are placed on the shelves according to the Dewey Decimal system and searchable through our online catalog (we use Opals) by subject, title, or author. We are a Baptist church, but not Southern Baptist..
I believe our definition is a book that is not specifically religious in nature, and also not written by a Christian author, but a specific definition is something I have yet to discuss with our pastor.
Let's revisit secular books. We have secular books in our collection, but we have weeded out a high percentage that carried over from the previous librarians. The remaining ones deal with leadership, gardening, cookbooks, history, etc. We use Dewey so we place them according to the book, A Classification System for Church Libraries. We do not label them as "secular." As we are running out of shelf space, the fist places we weed incules secular books.
Are we the only ones who have secular books?
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