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 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.
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?
Our church library does not include secular books. To stay withing budget and space constraints, I make an effort to focus on materials that cannot be obtained for free elsewhere. Our region has a robust public library system and secular books mentioned or recommended by our pastors (for example, Jonathan Haidt's "The Anxious Generation") are usually so easily accessible both in the physical libraries and the public library system app that it's unnecessary to own a copy in our own building. In the same way, I don't include secular or even extremely popular children's literature series (most families have The Chronicles of Narnia anyway, and every public library owns them).
Beyond issues of space and budget, it's important to us that the items in the collection support the doctrines of the church and don't cause confusion for believers in earlier stages of their walk. It's simpler for everyone if we don't include items that need to be qualified, you know? This is also part of the reason that we don't have fiction beyond the youth collection.
GREAT point, Melanie!