Library Acquisition Guidelines

As a follow up to the thread posted by HUMC yesterday, I'd like to solicit input on how acquisition decisions are being made for your church library. Do you have a library committtee reviewing what should be purchased? Does the pastor (or overall pastoral staff) make the book decisions? Do you accept any donations that are given, without any review? Do you list books you'd like to acquire so that members might be able to give specific donations?

And, what about "purging" the library? Do you ever go back and pull out of date texts? If so, who makes these decisions? Do you have any guidelines for when books are pulled? Do you donate the books you pull to individuals, missions groups or others?

Thanks for whatever input you can provide.

And what about old hymnals...music books? Do you keep those in the church library?

Most books I try to keep...I have weeded out several books that are really old and outdated....
I tried selling them to local used book stores..but they did not want them...
I tried giving them to libraries...but they did not want them.....
I aksed the congregation if they wanted them...but no one did...
so I finally ended up giving them to a local charity that was having a huge garage sale.....

Some books that are donated I all ready have...so I check with another local church and so far they have accdepted the duplicates for their library.

In addition to posts here, you may find useful information on this at the Church and Synagogue Library Association web site. This organization is very helpful in supporting the development of church librarians and collections.

There are also active mailing lists for librarians of collections in churches. One of those is the LINC-list.

Although both of those are non-denominational, discussion on LINC-list is mostly concerned with libraries in churches of the Christian faith.

Thanks for the web site information. I was looking at the CSLA site ..
does any one subscrtibe to their bi monthly magazine? Congregational Libraries Today...

am wonderign if an ongoing resource such as this would help me sort though my ongoing problems of what should be on the church library shelves....

Acquisition decisions in our library are often on recommendations made by patrons, suggestions from our pastor or any professional reading I do. I find that the Christian library has less of a turnover than a public or school library as many titles just stay popular for years. We do have a very strict donations policy as we are really in a "tight place" in a building that is over 500 years old. Most of the material I place in a give-away bin goes quickly as English language books are not so readily available here. We are continually blessed with contributions and suggestions. The only complaint is that we don't have more of the same thing. Anybody have some good Christian biographies they want to donate to an overseas church? We are looking to build up this area.

Consider donating your unwanted books to CRI Christian Resouces International http://cribooks.homestead.com/index.html They will take books even if they are a little worn and out of shape, and send them to those who need them. They ask for a small donation ($1 per pound) to help cover shipping.

thanks for the reference--it's good to know there is an organization that can make good use of duplicates, etc.

I seem to be the deciding factor in which books come into our library. We take donations, I go through them and try to get an idea if they are appropriate. Sometimes if I'm not sure, I will read them or give them to one of the prolific readers in our congregation to preview for me. On some of the more obscure works, I will ask the Pastor to look at it. That usually means I will never see it again, his office is like the Twilight Zone.... That's O.K., it means I don't have to decide. :) We have a budget of about $100 per year. I may be the only librarian to ask for a smaller budget, but I cannot seem to get people to use the library, though I've done book reviews and promotions, contests, surveys, request forms, etc. So I decided the money could be used better elsewhere and the library would survive on donations and the few new books per year I buy.

This is worth a new topic--what are ways that others have been able to get more usage of their church libraries. I will post a new thread shortly!