Paul Roberts

On a mission to revive the model of scholar-librarian.

Somewhere along the way, much of librarianship began concentrating on the organization of information for the mere sake of that organization of information rather than in direct service of scholarship. I purpose to change that focus and re-appropriate the organizational skills and administrative competencies of academic theological librarianship onto an academic discipline once again.

I am at present the reference librarian and director of patron services at a large theological seminary, a position which affords opportunity to  see and peruse all new books before they reach circulation, as well as providing access to the corpus of research and sources needed to fuel my own research endeavors.  Patron services are my primary responsibility in this privilege of assisting students and faculty in this mercurial world of information access.  My MSLS is from the University of Kentucky.

My primary research interests are found in the theological polemics and social history of the Reformation, especially in the Catholic and Swiss (Reformed) Reformations. Two personalities are of particular interest to me:  (1) Peter Martyr Vermigli, thanks to my ThM supervisor Dr. Frank James (now provost at Gordon-Conwell), a PMV scholar, and (2) Pierre Viret, the study of whom I am now currently engaged in under the direction of prof. dr. E. A. de Boer, my docktorvater, at TU Kampen (Netherlands). I also find Reginald Pole and Gasparo Contarini to be fascinating, but must leave them for another day. My ThM thesis was on the re-appropriation of ecclesiastical authority in the establishment and early years of the Genevan Consistory.  My doctoral work is on the relationship between Pierre Viret’s ecclesiology to his political thought, with emphasis on the influence of/on Jean Morély.

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