Book Love
Confessions of a Church Librarian
Albert Hsu
October 1, 2001
When I embarked on the adventure of church librarianship, I had grand visions of providing my congregation with the best in evangelical scholarship, with notable titles from university presses and significant works in theology, biblical studies, church history, cultural analysis, and philosophy. I anticipated leading book discussion groups where we would wrestle with ancient and contemporary classics—perhaps a study of Augustine's Confessions, or maybe something by Bonhoeffer, or at the very least C. S. Lewis. Instead, I've found myself skimming the latest in Christian historical romantic fiction, weighing the merits of various apocalyptic end-times novels, and getting the newest Veggie Tales videos as soon as they're released. And even though I consider myself a Christian book publishing professional, I was surprised to find out what I didn't know about books. It all happened like this: after our church librarian became pregnant with her fifth child, she asked me if I would consider taking over her library responsibilities. I seemed like a natural fit, since I'm something of a book geek and had already given her several dozen books to add to the shelves. It wasn't until a few months later that I realized how odd an experience this might be for me. I attended a Saturday conference for evangelical church librarians, and it slowly dawned on me that I was the only librarian in attendance who was visibly identifiable as a Gen Xer. In fact, there were very few people under forty. And, of course, I was one of only a handful of males. Maybe I'm perpetuating the stereotype that most librarians are middle-aged or elderly women, but such stereotypes arise for empirical reasons. As I attended workshops on reference systems and caring ...
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