Atla Annual 2024

There are solid strategic reasons for libraries to continue collecting materials in print format, but these may not always be obvious to institutional administrators and others outside the library. I will present a way to make this case on one sheet that is hopefully easy for non-librarians to understand. I will also offer ideas of when and where to present this case.

Most librarians must confront the daunting task of weeding/pruning/deselection the library’s collection. There is a wealth of literature showing that pruning is a win-win-win situation for library patron, collection, and librarian. There is also plenty of information about what kind of principles librarians should employ when evaluating a collection. However, when the rubber met the road, I found that all my research had left me unprepared for some of the practical and logistical challenges. This presentation is intended to show the practical lessons I learned while conducting a major pruning project, which lasted approximately 6 months and resulted in the pruning of more than 12,000 titles. While I learned these lessons in an academic setting, many can be applied in other types of libraries as well.

The turn toward digital resources has come with blessings and challenges. Electronic journals are quickly accessible and have, more or less, diminished the need for print journal collections. Electronic books afford simultaneous usage from an entire class and so can offer an affordable textbook alternative. In addition, the move toward Open Educational Resources, is also facilitated by digital resources. Nevertheless, theological libraries (like other humanities disciplines) still see a valid need for physical, printed books and resources. In this conversation, I want to facilitate a discussion concerning methods and modes for weeding library collections with a focus on the way that the physical collection will be used in the future. The weeding of a library is not only a part of routine maintenance, but it also should be responsive to the needs of library patrons. The increase in digital materials, even digital theological materials, presents opportunities and challenges for weeding collections.

Liberation theologies are not monolithic, varying widely across geography and denominations. That rich diversity, however, is rarely reflected in the catalog with subject headings, or on the shelves with limited classification options. This presents a significant challenge to researchers seeking resources on specific types of Liberation Theology.

In this session, Déborah Ortiz-Rivera will first introduce the audience to the history and diversity of Liberation Theologies from both the perspectives of geography and denomination/tradition. Specifically, this introduction will focus on the differences present in various regions of Latin America and between Catholic and Protestant denominations. Building on this groundwork, Brinna Michael will outline a two-fold project undertaken at Pitts Theology Library to address significant gaps in the representation of Liberation Theology in the catalog and stacks. First, Ortiz-Rivera and Michael supplemented existing subject headings with additional geographic and denominational context to improve the search and discovery experience for patrons. Second, they developed a local expansion of the official Library of Congress Classifications for Liberation (BT83.57), Hispanic American (BT83.575), and Mujerista (BT83.583) Theologies to include further subdivisions, including General works (.A1), General special (.A2), and By region or country (.A3-Z).

In an era where access to information is paramount, the global imbalance in theology resources is widening. Many majority world theological libraries face challenges in acquiring their collections but in the Western world, theological collections are surplus due to library closures, mergers, space limitations, or downsizing. This conference proposal advocates for a session focused on the strategic and ethical distribution of surplus books to theological libraries in the majority world. I have just established a not-for-profit organisation called Oxford Theology Resource Link. Currently, there are five ongoing projects to support to send books to Africa, East Europe and Asia. Please see https://oxfordtheologyresourceslink.web.ox.ac.uk/ for more information. Additionally, four to five more projects are in the pipeline to send books to Africa.

As more resources become available electronically, librarians have had to learn to read and negotiate legal licenses for valuable content without giving away valuable principles of librarianship. This session will look at several sources for sample legal language libraries can re-use in their own licenses to preserve values of librarianship, such as accessibility, confidentiality and price transparency, author rights and open access, digital rights management (DRM) and text and data mining (TDM).

As online instruction allows universities to reach a global audience, there is a growing demand to offer course instruction and resources in multiple languages. While the ALA’s Standards for Libraries in Higher Education state that libraries must provide “access to collections sufficient in quality, depth, diversity, format and currency to the research and teaching mission of the institution,” guidelines and support for developing multilingual collections in higher education are severely lacking. Meanwhile, many publishers and aggregators have international divisions, but this does not necessarily mean that non-English resources are available in the US. This session will allow librarians who manage multilingual collections to come together and share their challenges, experiences, and successes in meeting the needs of their institutions’ multilingual instruction endeavors.