Theological Education Volume 40, Number 1 ISSUE FOCUS 2004 New Directions for the Timeless Quest— Theological Libraries in an Era of Change What’s a Seminary Library for? Timothy D. Lincoln Jam To-morrow and Jam Yesterday, but Never Jam To-day: The Dilemma of Theology Libraries Planning for the Twenty-first Century Jack W. Ammerman Changing Libraries, Changing Collections Donald M. Vorp Is There Anything Worthwhile on the Web? A Cooperative Project to Identify Scholarly Resources in Theology and Religion Eileen Crawford, Amy Limpitlaw, and Bill Hook Incorporating Global Perspectives into Theological Education: The Role of the Library Martha Lund Smalley and Paul F. Stuehrenberg Librarians and Teaching Faculty in Collaboration: New Incentives, New Opportunities Melody Layton McMahon Is There a Strategic Alliance in Your Future? Lessons Learned from Library Consortia Ann Hotta Information Literacy in Theological Education Douglas L. Gragg Assessing Library Performance in a New Landscape, or “How Did We Do Today?” Jan Malcheski BOOK REVIEWS OPEN FORUM Reducing the Identity Crisis in Doctor of Ministry Education Charles J. Conniry Jr. Getting Them Through the Doctor of Ministry Dissertation Steve Delamarter Thinking Again about the Reformed Tradition and Public Life Mark Douglas, Lewis Mudge, and Jim Watkins The Association of Theological Schools IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA ISSN 0040-5620 Theological Education is published semiannually by The Association of Theological Schools IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 10 Summit Park Drive Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15275-1103 DANIEL O. ALESHIRE Executive Editor JEREMIAH J. McCARTHY Editor DAVID R. 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Stewart Theological Education Volume 40, Number 1 2004 Issue Editor’s Introduction iii David R. Stewart ISSUE FOCUS New Directions for the Timeless Quest— Theological Libraries in an Era of Change What’s a Seminary Library For? 1 Timothy D. Lincoln Jam To-morrow and Jam Yesterday, but Never Jam To-day: 11 The Dilemma of Theology Libraries Planning for the Twenty-first Century Jack W. Ammerman Changing Libraries, Changing Collections 31 Donald M. Vorp Is There Anything Worthwhile on the Web? A Cooperative Project 49 to Identify Scholarly Resources in Theology and Religion Eileen Crawford, Amy Limpitlaw, and Bill Hook Incorporating Global Perspectives into Theological Education: 59 The Role of the Library Martha Lund Smalley and Paul F. Stuehrenberg Librarians and Teaching Faculty in Collaboration: 73 New Incentives, New Opportunities Melody Layton McMahon Is There a Strategic Alliance in Your Future? 89 Lessons Learned from Library Consortia Ann Hotta Information Literacy in Theological Education 99 Douglas L. Gragg Assessing Library Performance in a New Landscape, 113 or “How Did We Do Today?” Jan Malcheski BOOK REVIEWS 127 OPEN FORUM Reducing the Identity Crisis in Doctor of Ministry Education 137 Charles J. Conniry Jr. Getting Them Through the Doctor of Ministry Dissertation 153 Steve Delamarter Thinking Again about the Reformed Tradition and Public Life 169 Mark Douglas, Lewis Mudge, and Jim Watkins i Editor’s Introduction: The Prospect in View Continuing the Conversation Theological Education invites responses, of up to 1500 words, to articles published in the journal in order to foster conversation among its readers. Reader responses may be e-mailed to the Managing Editor at <[email protected]>. Responses are published at the discretion of the editors and may be edited for length. 2004-2006 Editorial Board Christopher Lind, Chair Toronto School of Theology Phyllis Anderson Seattle University School of Theology and Ministry Sherwood G. Lingenfelter Fuller Theological Seminary Kevin O’Neil Washington Theological Union Stephanie Paulsell Harvard University Divinity School Martha Ellen Stortz Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary ii David R. Stewart Editor’s Introduction: The Prospect in View David R. Stewart, Issue Editor Luther Seminary he first book I ever read on the Lewis and Clark expedition was Tslightly unusual: Dayton Duncan’s Out West: An American Journey,1 in which the author used a Volkswagen bus to retrace the journey of the original Corps of Discovery. It seemed to Duncan, I guess, that this chosen mode of transport would be just primitive and tenuous enough to retain some of the arduousness of the original quest—better than, say, a fully equipped fifty-foot motor home could have done. Not surprisingly, in his own version of that intrepid journey, Duncan saw traces both of continuity and change: the vast, enduring emptiness of much of the land on one hand; signs of its having been tamed or domesticated on the other. These two versions of the same quest crossed my mind again some years later while on a drive of my own from Toronto to Vancouver, by way of Chicago. After a long day on the road, with the grey sky threatening snow, I stopped for dinner one evening at a place called “Al’s Oasis,” in Oacoma, SD.2 Just across Interstate 90 there still flowed what was left of the Missouri, looking less like a river than a reservoir after years of engineering work. Trying to capture a little of the spirit of the place, I ordered the buffalo burger and found that a couple of intriguing questions occupied my thoughts as I enjoyed the local cuisine: even if the route Lewis and Clark took is still more or less traceable and the terrain they traversed remained largely unchanged, how much of their spirit of discovery endured? How much of it could be recovered? These same questions provide one way of framing the purpose of the essays presented here. It could be argued that no branch of librarianship has a more enduring commitment to the past than theological librarianship: history, ancient texts and their interpretation, and so on are the lifeblood of the study of theology. This part of the terrain isn’t changing much—and isn’t going to. Yet, appearances of tranquility aside, the environment in which we go about our work as theological librarians can hardly be described as stable or predictable. Moreover, it’s equally clear that an attachment to the past alone, or nostalgia for vanished scholastic cultures of other times, are about the least promising ways to be “outfitted” for the future. Thus, all of us in theological education can profit from a fresh, clear-eyed look at what the terrain of the study of theology presents to us, an honest inventory of what we, (at our best) are able to bring to the terrain, and a thoughtful consideration of what our best prospects accordingly are. It is iii Editor’s Introduction: The Prospect in View precisely this that the essays and reviews that follow in this theme issue of Theological Education are intended to provide.3 Let me map out just a few of the issues and contours that will be addressed in what follows: What the terrain presents to us Signs of retrenchment Even for an optimist, it’s a challenge to describe the current landscape of theological education and the theological libraries that support and energize the educational enterprise in terms that don’t sound unhelpfully gloomy. Yet our shared interests are better served by realism than by naïve optimism. We seem to be at the end of a growth period (have there ever been this many theological libraries in any other phase of the history of the church?), where even libraries of great renown are seeing reorganization and restraint on a comprehensive scale. There are almost certain to be fewer theological libraries in the near future than there have been in recent generations, and with very few exceptions even those that remain are going to be grappling with cutbacks to acquisitions funds. This calls for different kinds of creativity and resourceful- ness than we have needed in the past. Greater complexity of media and of resources Stewardship of acquisitions or materials budgets has never been a simple task, but the challenge has intensified with the diversification of media. It’s no longer simply a matter of how to allocate resources (print, periodicals, micro- form, CD-ROM, DVD, web-based subscription databases, image and audio as well as text, and so on), but of how to configure their accessibility (e.g., how many of our students are able to visit the library with any regularity?) and ensure their sustainability (e.g., what happens to our access to certain resources if a vendor of web-databases goes bankrupt?).