The Impact of the Christian Faith on Library Service
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Volume 49 Issue 2 Article 16 2006 The Impact of the Christian Faith on Library Service Stanford Terhune Malone College The Christian Librarian is the official publication of the Association of Christian Librarians (ACL). To learn more about ACL and its products and services please visit //www.acl.org/ Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/tcl Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Recommended Citation Terhune, Stanford (2006) "The Impact of the Christian Faith on Library Service," The Christian Librarian: Vol. 49 : Iss. 2 , Article 16. Available at: https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/tcl/vol49/iss2/16 This General Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ George Fox University. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Christian Librarian by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ George Fox University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Impact of the Christian Faith on Library Service The library profession is in flux and uncertainty due collections of books. In the nineteenth century, Stanford Terhune Malone College to its lack of a well-founded philosophy of service. this view broadened to allow readers free Canton, Ohio The Christian faith provides the necessary access to book collections. Recently, there has philosophical framework. Three implications follow been a loss of focus about what the aims of from the application of a Christian worldview to library service should be. Paul Wasserman, a library practice. First, Christian librarians should leading library science writer, suggests that EDITOR’S NOTE: provide access to collections that will allow students This article originally appeared Because we are so pragmatic a craft, … our to integrate faith and learning. Second, they should in The Christian Librarian, educational objectives tend to be shallow and demonstrate love and concern for library users by volume 25, issue numbers 3 perfunctory. Not only do we not know many of the offering diligent, humble service.Third, they should and 4, May/August, 1982 - essential things needed if we are to shape our teach students the ethical use of information resources. the ACL 25th anniversary destiny, but seemingly do not care to know, and so special edition. Christianity has an impact on “library service” in we blissfully perpetuate ourselves in unquestioning three areas. First, the word library presumes a innocence or stupidity … Because we do not ask the collection of library materials: books, periodicals, hard questions, we complacently compartmentalize microfilms, motion pictures, cassettes, records, and other ourselves into the traditional containers and offer forms of media. Second, the word service signifies students the reassurance of our history. Only this no the way the librarian goes about helping people find longer works in a culture and in a profession where answers to their information needs.Third, correct use our institutions and our ideology are the subject of of library resources connotes proper library ethics. excruciating reexamination and reassessment.2 Before this paper discusses these three areas, it will Librarians have become so involved in their be useful to survey the current state of library everyday duties that they seldom have time to philosophy. stand back and think about the principles of their profession. In this century, the exponential The Philosophy of Library Service increase in the amount published and the large For centuries, librarians saw their role as that number of students to be served has often of collecting, placing in order, and guarding focused the librarian’s attention on the 91 Racing Into the Future The Christian Librarian, 49 (2) 2006 development of technical methods to house library and the user] are middlemen between and provide intellectual access to the sheer resources and users – negotiators, merchandisers, mass of materials.Wasserman notes that communicators, and generators of both questions and answers.”6 Increasingly the role When technical advances are made, too often they of librarians is seen to be that of information are viewed as ends in themselves rather than as transfer specialists, acting solely as mediators in devices for dramatically enlarging the scope of client a value-free manner between information and service.At issue is the intrinsic institutional purpose: those who seek it. knowledge for what, libraries for whom? … While libraries, whatever their type, remain value-neutral, In this period of uncertainty, librarians are they remain the arbitrary and bureaucratic servants seeking new ways of fulfilling their roles. of power which is nameless and uncommitted to the Rather than holding a static, mechanistic view service of mankind.3 of librarianship, librarians have moved into an organic/process mode of thinking about their Those whom the librarian is to serve often get field. For Taylor, “decisions should be made lost from the librarian’s sight because the that will leave as many options open in the librarian is distracted by the crush of new future as are feasible, economical and practical. materials or by new technical advances. For This is not mere procrastination (although an Wasserman,“the question ultimately is how to element of this may exist) but a realistic harness the technical requisites of information estimate of the present state (or nonstate) of processing in tandem with value perspectives library thinking. It is also a reflection of both essential to the determination of choice, or to changing technologies and changing patterns put it another way,where, how,and for whom, of liberal education.”7 for what ends, is the information system to be?”4 As the preceding discussion has shown, the philosophy of library service is either The “library” concept of the profession has nonexistent or in flux. I believe this is in part changed from that of a passive storehouse of because of the changes taking place in library knowledge, a mere collection of books, into an technology and practice, and because of a information system. Some innovative thinkers rebalancing of library service toward a have refocused the librarian’s attention from client-centered philosophy. But it is also in the collection to the student. According to flux and uncertainty because it is laid on the Robert S.Taylor, basis of human thought, and not on the basis It is the process of matching resources with users, of God’s creation order and Christian truth, both current and potential, which defines, limits, and which is the only true basis for any lasting sets systems. It is the user who defines systems, not philosophy. I hope that in the following the physical object. The very fact that we thought discussion some elements of a Christian of these things in the other order indicates the philosophy of library service can be made perfidious and unconscious assumptions of the whole clear. profession. Everyone – the librarian, the information The pattern of library service in a Christian scientist, the documentalist – is concerned with the college is intimately linked with a focused handling of materials, rather than with the needs of pattern of thought about Christian liberal people: their needs must match the packages.This is education. Such an outline has been given in an insidious form of forcing ideas into straitjackets.5 Arthur Holmes’ The Idea of a Christian College. Taylor suggests what the future role of Holmes makes a point that is significant for a librarians must be, and in so doing states a Christian view of the library’s resources: current concept of librarianship: “Librarians While Scripture is our final rule of faith and concerned with this interface [between the practice, not all the truth about everything is fully 93 Racing Into the Future The Christian Librarian, 49 (2) 2006 revealed therein. Rather, the eternal Logos has left leave, they will be much more dependent on his imprint on nature and man and history, and the the integrative skills they learned at college as truth discovered therein is God’s truth too … If all they interact with books and other media if truth is God’s truth,we must be free to explore it. If they want to continue to integrate faith and it all ultimately fits into a coherent whole, then our learning throughout life. If they have become task is to interpret it as such by developing entirely dependent on prepackaged Christian Christian perspectives in the natural and social integration fed to them in college courses and sciences and the humanities, so as to structure a from the library reserve bookshelf, they will Christian world-view that exhibits plainly the lack library and other investigative skills to principle that truth is one and all truth is God’s.8 continue this task once they have left school. Therefore, it is the duty of the Christian This same truth – though admittedly not all of librarian to teach students both basic and it – is contained within the Christian advanced library skills and critical interaction college library’s collections.It is the purpose of with books so that they can do this work the Christian librarian to help order and independently. structure that truth, and assist faculty and students as they struggle to discover and The Christian College Library organize that truth into a Christian worldview. Modern library thought sometimes views A primary goal of the Christian college is to libraries as information systems, with educate its students, to equip them so that they the emphasis on methods of handling can effectively function in the world in “information.”The librarian is seen as a pur- Christ’s service. A Christian college should veyor of information who is not concerned proceed in the same spirit as Paul when he with the values contained in a particular book said, “Him we proclaim, warning every man or piece of information, or its ability to impact and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we a person’s life.