2017 American Theological Library Association Annual Conference

Video is an increasingly important part of any institution’s online presence, regardless of the industry, but undertaking the production of videos for your organization can be a daunting task. In this session we’ll talk about some common strategies for achieving your goals, whether that means brushing up on your own skills or learning how to work with contractors. Sam Smartt is a documentary filmmaker and Assistant Professor of Film & Media in the Communication Arts and Sciences department at Calvin College.

In the digital age, marketing has become both increasingly necessary and increasingly challenging for libraries. How can we market our services in ways that truly engage patrons? Brian Mathews presents a refreshing, patron-centered approach to library marketing in Marketing Today’s Academic Library. In her review of Mathews’s book in Theological Librarianship, Kate L. Ganski argues that theological libraries could greatly benefit from Mathews’s framework.
In this session, we will answer Ganski’s call. Building on Mathews’s framework and using Pitts Theology Library as a case study, we will explore the steps that theological libraries can take to market their services: (1) defining patron needs and library offerings, (2) connecting with patrons, (3) selecting promotional formats, (4) branding, (5) designing messages, and (6) measuring impact. Throughout, we will explore examples and visuals from the library’s marketing of special collections, instructional programs, and other services to students, faculty, and the broader community.

Theological libraries are using more open source software to solve their problems. Examples include CMSs such as Omeka and Drupal, digital signage software like Xibo, and ILS systems like Koha. Recent conference proceedings have highlighted specific uses of tools at specific institutions in specific situations, as well as the potential difficulties of implementing them. This shows that interest exists in the topic. However, there is no real data on the overall landscape, on which tools are popular for specific problems, or on the skill levels that staff need to have in order to use those tools. This paper draws off of a survey of theological libraries and aims to show the current overall state of open source software usage by providing a general picture of the tools that theological libraries are using or have used and what the overall experience with those tools are at institutions of various sizes as well as introducing various tools and the technical skills needed to make full use of them.

Good planning is vitally important to the life of an organization. What model of planning would help theological libraries? We are embedded in the field of theological education, which is experiencing a great amount of change. Our greatest commodity, information, is growing exponentially as technology and access develop at a rapid pace. Strategic planning processes, while extremely popular, yield static plans that stay in place for a specified time period. With this model of planning, there is a risk that it becomes outdated and obsolete before its expiration date. Is there a better way?

Integrated library planning begins with a strategic planning process; but once set in motion, it becomes a dynamic, living plan. The planning model presented in this session is an adaptation of integrated business planning models that have surfaced in corporate industries over the past decade. First implemented in a small theological library, this model is adaptable and scalable for theological and academic libraries of any size. The presentation will include suggestions for implementation and examples from its use at Schaff Library, Lancaster Theological Seminary.

Join us for a group discussion on current student engagement with library services and a vision for the future that includes patron consultations on emerging technologies such as virtual reality. Dialogue around current student engagement will begin with a summary of findings from three usability studies conducted at the Andover-Harvard Theological Library. The future of student engagement will then be considered through a pilot initiative that circulates hardware and curates content for virtual reality experiences. The session will then be opened up for audience members to share related usability and emerging technology projects in their respective libraries.

At the 2016 Annual Conference, participants of the Small Libraries group talked about various collaborative projects. A few libraries in this group are creating information literacy videos to be shared with other small libraries. This session will cover the overall organization of the project and talk about how we created the videos and how we are sharing the videos. Participants will be encouraged to share ideas that they have for possible videos and to volunteer to create videos for the project.

The Small Libraries Interest Group will be having our FIRST meeting as an official interest group at the end of this session. Join us!  

Annual business meeting of the Small Libraries Interest Group.

The presentation discusses a plan of creating a database of the historical registers in the Library of the Forty Martyrs in Mardin/Turkey, dated between the 15th century and the 19th century. These records relate to ecclesiastic aspects which include: birth, baptism, marriage, and death records. In addition, there are biographies of clergies, saints, notables, writers, and copyists. Furthermore, the lists of ecclesiastic ordinations such as deacons, monks, nuns, priests, bishops, and patriarchs are included. The last major category present in Mardin’s archives is documents relating to endowments and donations.

These archives are important sources for the social religious history in Near East during the Ottoman period. The database would offer direct access to scholars and students of Ottoman history to the sources and the possibility to examine the duplicates of original documents as well as the possibility to search a particular word in the documents. This topic relates also to the area of librarianship, the use of technology, scholarly communications, and programs that apply to religious studies bibliographers working in university settings. In short, the extracted social, cultural, religious, and geographic information in these archives will be stored in a database system and made of use to scholarly research by schema program.

ATLA Press publishes open access resources that identify major works, issues of contention, and schools of thought that propel research in religion and theology; develop knowledge and skills in librarianship, pedagogy, research methodology; and represent specialized topics of interest in religion and theology. Join the Editors in Chief of the four ATLA Press imprints (Summary of Proceedings, monographs, Theological Librarianship, and Theology Cataloging Bulletin) to hear about the current state of their publications as well as future visions and plans. They will also share information about working with an editor to turn ideas into a final published product.

This session will provide a basic overview of the state of the art of ebook collection development and acquisition strategies as they pertain to individual libraries and shared collections. It will also solicit a list of ebook-related challenges from the audience, and suggest initial steps for a roadmap that could be followed to support future cooperative development of individual library and cooperative ebook strategies.