I have a vested interest in the future of libraries and will understandably rage against the dying of their light. My interest is both professional and personal, and though the professional literature says I should be concerned that my bibliographic responsibility and bibliophilic personality may soon be at odds, and though part of me laments this reportedly dubious future with an increasingly sentimental sigh, I am made more willing to see the centrality of bindings and casings go somewhat peacefully into that good night because of an even greater affection and purpose. The unique experience of encountering true eloquence in words and true elegance in print, though regrettably irreplaceable, is not the reason why I am a seminary librarian.

Kenneth Kantzer, in a 1983 Christianity Today article, recounted his perspective on the role of a library in preparation for ministry:

I began my own advanced study for the ministry when I graduated from college in the 1930’s. I sought an accredited school committed to a consistent biblical theology, with a scholarly faculty, a large library, and a disciplined intellectual atmosphere. I couldn’t find any. The nonevangelical schools had great libraries, strong scholarly faculties, and impressive reputations as accredited centers of learning. The evangelical schools had no libraries to speak of, unknown faculty (J. Gresham Machen, the last evangelical scholar, had just died), and no tradition of high scholarship. (”Documenting the Dramatic Shift in Seminaries from Liberal to Conservative,” CT 2/4/83)

Access to a large library caused Kantzer, at least in part, to choose Harvard over an evangelical institution for his Ph.D. studies. Other options did exist. Just not any with large libraries.

Today, it would appear that quite a few evangelical seminaries have libraries that measure up well. As R. Albert Mohler points out, books are more affordable today than at any point in history. This glut of available print has enabled seminaries to build formidable libraries — and just in time for the digital age. I read at least an article per week about the dubious future of academic libraries and the varying theories on how to help your library survive. Serial subscriptions in academic libraries have been on the decline for years because of their digital availability and rising print costs. This availability renders the content more ubiquitous (or, at least, access to that content) and payment is often a bit more budget-friendly. This is just one example of the modern change and evolution of information delivery in libraries.

Modes of information delivery change and evolve. They always have. These changes in the means of information propagation are always accompanied by significant cultural progressions as well, though the order of these two is often debatable (see Paradigms Lost: The Life and Deaths of the Printed Word). The point is that we are in one of those times. That may be unfortunate for libraries (time will tell), but it is not necessarily bad for the reason why I became a librarian.

Would Kantzer have chosen Harvard today? Perhaps. But not if the tipping point is access to information in the form of a sizable library like he faced over a half-century ago, and neither will future Kantzers in the next half-century since the information formerly housed in physical silos will be more ubiquitously available digitally. The challenge of academic research during Kantzer’s time was the scarcity of information. Reference services were needed by students to help identify, locate, and access necessary works. Today, however, the challenge of academic research is the glut of information, not the lack of it. Reference services are needed in order to help navigate this glut to identify what is truly helpful and necessary. This is a marvelous problem — and one which will likely relieve evangelical seminaries from keeping up with the Harvard Joneses.

I did not become a seminary librarian in order to introduce pastors-in-training to books. I became a librarian in order to be a part of something much larger. The experience of losing yourself in a library of books is indeed marvelous (remember William of Baskerville’s lingering experience in the abbey library?), but the experience of losing yourself in order to gain Christ is of infinitely greater worth. If the library prophets are right and the coming generation will know less of libraries but have greater access to information, then seminaries — though filled with book-lovers — stand to gain the most. As the amount of available information increases with the ease of access to that information, more pastors will find a seminary theological education a viable option for them. Investing truth in those who will invest in others also is the calling of ministry, and the present revolution means that services such as our library’s new digital repository may help advance the purpose of the seminary and push resources, services, and training out into the lives of those desiring to be equipped for the work of ministry.

As for the library? I do hope we are not yet reading the library’s elegy and that the library’s remarkable ability to withstand the “forces of change and the power of princes” will indeed prevail, but as Matthew Battles rightly points out,

From age to age, libraries grow and change, flourish and disappear, blossom and contract–and yet through them all we’re chasing after Alexandria, seeking a respite on Parnassus, haunted by the myths of knowledge and of wholeness that books spawn when massed in their millions. The divine irony that Borges discovered while groping his way through the stacks strikes the sighted librarian just as powerfully: preserving themselves, the books elude us.

But to borrow from both Dylan Thomas and Umberto Eco, I will rage against the dying the light before we hold the empty name of yesterday’s rose. All the more, however, should I borrow from our Lord himself: “But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” (Matthew 6:30, ESV)

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Books, Libraries, Poetry, Quotes, Research, Tech | 3 Comments »

In case you did not already know, this is National Poetry Month. This constitutes my obligatory poetry post.

I recently saw two books that describe architecture as a poetic endeavor: John Ruskin’s 1893 Poetry of Architecture and Randall Alan Stauffer’s 1989 Architectural Poetry: Study of Spatial and Temporal Expression. If this analogy is valid, then the Library of Congress is without a doubt America’s greatest epic poem. And it is still being written. Or, at least, it is being edited and revised. See the LOC’s latest “lyrical” improvements:

Visit the Library of Congress.

Read the Library of Congress Blog.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Libraries, Poetry | No Comments »

I’ve seen a lot of fences in the last few days. Those pretty fences one only sees in Kentucky’s horse country: flat stones stacked waist-high, with perpendicular ones laid along the top. Something about that is attractive to me: permanence, boundaries, strength.

One of my favorite poems by Robert Frost is his “Mending Wall,” which begins with the famous line, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” He’s right. Walls deteriorate and require work to keep up. I think, though, that when it comes to human relationships, even the most intimate of relationships, walls are natural and require continuous work to tear down.

In Frost’s poem, two neighbors meet every Spring to walk the length of the fence that divides them and, keeping the fence between them, they repair the stones that have fallen from the wall over the course of the year. One neighbor is convinced that “good fences make good neighbors.” The other, however, is not convinced:

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That wants it down.

We can debate the extent to which walls make good neighbors. There can be no debate, however, that they make for terrible marriages. My wife and I have just returned from our yearly retreat with the sole purpose of toppling walls, and I am reminded that I have the most patient and longsuffering wife on the planet. Here’s to open fields, sweetheart. May it always remain so.

I promised Barbara Napier, the host and incredible gourmet of the beautiful, relaxing, and ambrosial Snug Hollow Farm Bed and Breakfast, that I would offer some cyber-kudos for her hospitality. Thanks, Barbara!

Popularity: 36% [?]

Poetry, Uncategorized | No Comments »

In Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Sancho Panza (Quixote’s squire) describes the insatiable and indiscriminate appetite of Death in one of his classic sanchismos:

By my faith, Señor,” responded Sancho, “you mustn’t trust in the fleshless woman, I mean Death, who devours lamb as well as mutton; I’ve heard our priest say that she tramples the high towers of kings as well as the humble huts of the poor. This lady is more powerful than finicky; nothing disgusts her, she eats everything, and she does everything, and she crams her pack with all kinds and ages and ranks of people. She’s not a reaper who takes naps; she reaps constantly and cuts the dry grass along with the green, and she doesn’t seem to chew her food but wolfs it down and swallows everything that’s put in front of her, because she’s hungry as a dog and is never satisfied; and though she has no belly, it’s clear that she has dropsy and is always thirsty and ready to drink down the lives of everyone living, like somebody drinking a pitcher of cold water. — Trans. Edith Grossman (New York: HarperCollins, 2003) p. 590.

Compare that with John Donne’s classic poem, Death Be Not Proud:

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Sometimes it takes the Easter season to turn the Sancho Panzas among us back into John Donnes.

Popularity: 46% [?]

Books, Poetry | No Comments »

While surfing Early English Books Online (our library recently purchased perpetual access), I found this anonymous ballad on the resurrection of Christ penned somewhere between 1658 and 1664. I’ve retained the original punctuation and spelling, though I have converted the typeset to modern lettering. Have a blessed Easter Day!

A most Godly and Comfortable Ballad of the Glorious
Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, how he Triumphed over Death, and Hell and Sin,
whereby we are certainly perswaded of our Rising again from the Dead.
The tune is, Rogero.

What faithful froward sinful man,
so far from grace is fled;
That doth no in his heart believe
the rising of the Dead?
Or why do wicked mortal men,
their Lives so painly frame,
Which being dead they do suppose
they shall not rise again.

For why if that the dead indeed,
which now consuming lies,
Shall not by God be rais’d again,
then Christ did never rise:
And if so be our Saviour sweet,
did not rise from the death,
Our Preaching is of no effect,
and vain our hope on earth.

If Christ rose not again I say,
then are we yet in Sin,
And they that fall asleep in him,
no part of joy shall win:
Of all the Creatures Living then,
which God on earth did frame,
Most wretched are the states of men,
which spend there days in vain.

But Christ is risen up from death,
as it was right and meet,
And thereby trod down death and hell
and sin under his feet:
And that the same to simple men,
the plainer might appear,
The glorious rising of the Lord,
his word declareth clear.

When he within the Grave was laid,
the Jews did watch-men set,
Lest by his friends his Corps from thence
should secretly be fet:
A mighty stone likewise they did,
on his Sepulchre role;
And all for fear his body should
away from thence be stole.

But in the dead time of the night,
a mighty Earth-quake came,
The which did shake both Sea and Land
and all within the same:
And then the angel of the Lord
came down from heaven so high,
And rol’d away the mighty stone,
which on the ground did lye.

His face did shine like flaming fire,
his cloaths were white as Snow,
Which put the watch-men in great fear,
who ran away for woe;
And told unto the high priest plain,
what I do now rehearse,
Who hired them for money straight
that they would hold their peace.

And say quoth he his servants came,
whom he sometimes did keep,
And secreetly stole him away,
while ye were fast asleep;
And that Herod hear thereof,
we wil perswade him so,
That you shall find no hurt at all
wherever you do go.

But faithful Mary Magdalen,
and James here Brother too,
They brought great store of oyntment
as Jesus were wont to do;
Who rose up early in the morn
before that it was day,
The body of the Lord ‘t anoint,
in Grave whereas he lay.

And when unto the Grave they came;
they were in wondrous fear,
They saw a young-man in the same
but Christ they saw not there:
then said the Angel unto them
why are you so afraid?
The Lord whom you do seek I know
is risen up he said.

Then went these women both away
who told these tydings than,
To John & Peter who in hast
to the Sepulchre ran:
Who found it as the woman said,
and then away did go,
But Mary stayed weeping still,
whose tears declard her woe.

Who looking down into the grave
two angels there did see,
Quoth they why weeps this woman so,
even for my Lord quoth she:
And turning then her self aside
as she stood weeping so,
the Lord was standing at her back,
but him she did not know.

Why doth this woman weep he said,
whom seek’st thou in this place?
She thought it had the gardiner been,
and thus she inews her case
If thou hast born him hence she said
then tell me where he is
And for to fetcht him back again,
besure I will not miss.

What Mary then our Saviour said.
dost thou lament for me
O Master livest thou again
my soul doth joy in thee:
O Mary touch me not he said,
e’re I have been above,
Even with my God, the only God,
and Father whom we love.

And oftentimes did Christ appear,
to his disciples all;
But Thomas would not it believe
his faith it was so small
Except that he might thrust his hand
into the wound so deep
And put his finger where the sphear
did pierce his tender side.

Then Christ which know all secrets
to them again came he
Who siad to Thomas here I am
as plainly thou may’st se
See here the hands which nails did pierce
and holes are in my side
And be not faithless thou man
for whom these pains I bide.

Thus sundry times Christ shew’d himself
when he did rise again
And then desended into heaven
in glory for to reign
Where he prepares a place for those
whom he shall raise Likewise:
To live with him in heavenly bliss,
above the lofty Skies.

Popularity: 60% [?]

Poetry, Soteriology, Theology | 2 Comments »