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How do you view the church library? 

I view the library as a service, as a ministry and as a way to practice good stewardship of our resources.

 

Would you say your church library is part of the Ministry Team in your church?

no

Do you have regular contact or input from the pastor, group leaders or council in your church?

no

 What would be the biggest area served in your church? ie small groups, children, dvd's, fiction, non fictionchildren and women's fiction

fiction, women's fiction and children

 Size of your congragation? 

200-300

Number of items in your library?

1700

Method of sign out? card, computerized, other

card

Do you feel supported in your work?

no

How many "staff" do you have?

1

Do you have a commitee?

no

Do you make reports to your council?

no

Do you have a budget amount?

yes

Do you fundraise?

no

Do you have a newsletter/publication in the church newsletter or bullitin?

not regularly

Do you have contact with a Library Association?

I am a member of the National Church Library Association. I would really really love to have The CRC have workshops for librarians and an exchange of email addresses.

.Comments

I have just finished putting our library into the ResourceMate database. I am working on getting this onto our church's webpage so people will be able to search the library from their computer at home.I also would like to have the CRC emphasize the library as a ministry and train librarians.

Yes!!!!!!!!!!!  I would love to have the CRC develope a site like the One Year Bible Journey. It would be awesome to think about reading the same thing as our fellow CRC brothers and sisters at the same time. Commentary  explaining the passage istorically and culturaly and advice for promoting actions in our life  would be a tremendous help. I would love to see ideas such as "this passage speaks about Social Justice or Stewardship" and give ideas about how to put this into practice in our daily life. Imagine if the whole CRC church were reading this at the same time!! Wow.

Hi Jo,

I wonder if we can rename this forum from Church Library to Church Library Ministry.

I feel the church library in  our CRC churches are untapped learning resources and outreach ministries .I would love to see the CRC take the stand that our libraries are ministries. They need to be talked about in the CRC and with some librarian training they could be awesome places of ministry. Just this week..... we signed out some books and DVDs to our Friendship Ministry people. Also, I purchased some good book glue and I am repairing  Bibles that are dearly loved and are falling apart.

There are many ways to use the library as a Ministry!! Do any other librarians have ideas about how God could use us?

If you are a librarian, please reply to this.Let's get some discussion going!

Does anyone else have ongoing ministries in their churches that we could loan books to? Jail ministry, perhaps, or Kids Hope.

Hi Jo,

I am a member of the National Church Library Association. Membership is $55 a year. The link to them is.... 

 

http://www.churchlibraries.org/ and Im usually find something I can use i 

They have an email newsletter, "Branches", that I find helpful. It has book reviews and articles; I usually find something usefull in each issue. They have group member discounts for library supplies etc. They also have links to helpful online resources

I wish the price was lower. I also wish they had meeetings closer to Michigan. 

Do any of you librarians out there have a favorite website you would like to share? Where do you get Christian book reviews and/or library ideas?

Hi,

I'm Marlene Boven at Cadillac CRC in Cadillac, Michigan. We, too, have a collection of around 2500 books plus audio books and DVD's. I am so happy to have other Christian librarians to talk to! We are recently automated but have some final tweeks to do before we go online. Discussions that would interest me are book reviews and library promotion ideas. Also, what are your thoughts about investing more money in audio CD's with the usage of MP3 players etc.?

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