Theological Libraries and International Collaboration
Keynote Address
Forum of Asian Theological Librarians (ForATL) Conference
March 10-13, 2009, Trinity Theological College, Singapore
By
Paul F. Stuehrenberg
Yale Divinity Librarian
First, permit me to extend my thanks and appreciation for this opportunity
to address you. It is a great honor for me to be invited to deliver
the keynote address at this conference. Today I would like to share
some thoughts with you on international collaboration between theological
libraries. This is a topic that has long been of interest to me,
one that I think has great promise for all of us as we move forward.
Those of you who saw the most recent issue of the ForATL Newsletter
know that this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Raymond Morris’
visit to Southeast Asia. Mr. Morris, Director of the Yale Divinity
Library for forty years, from 1932 to 1972, was commissioned by
the Board of Founders of the Nanking Theological Seminary to “assist
in the improvement of the libraries of Christian theological institutions
in Southeast Asia.” After five months of preparation, Mr.
Morris left for Southeast Asia on December 28, 1958, returning to
New York on April 22, 1959. He visited theological institutions
in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia,
Thailand, Burma, and India. He led a three-week workshop on theological
librarianship in the Philippines, and spent nearly every day either
meeting with people (over fifty institutions and interviews with
more than 400 individuals) or traveling. The only day he had off
was Easter Sunday, which he spent in Athens, Greece, on his way
home. His report does not indicate whether or not he went to church
that day, nor does it say whether he toured Athens or rested in
his hotel room. He reports, “I left the States tired and I
returned even more tired.”
What he accomplished on that trip perhaps you know better than
I (but more on that later). What I do know is that his report did
not paint a very rosy picture. Theological libraries were not very
well stocked with books and other resources, they were poorly organized,
and did not adequately support either teaching or research. Many
of the problems stemmed from inadequate support from mission boards,
and a problematic transition in leadership from mission agencies
to indigenous leadership. He also noted that theological students
generally did not read books, as instruction at the time relied
heavily on the lecture, with grading based on tests. Students were
generally not required to write papers. He recommended that introductory
texts be developed for use in the classroom using language the students
could understand. He concluded his report calling for continued
financial support for theological education in Southeast Asia by
the West. Such support would be necessary (1) to improve the physical
equipment in the institutions; (2) to provide operating budgets
for instruction, library, and books; (3) to underwrite conferences
and occasions when leadership in this area can be drawn together
for mutual discussion and stimulation; and (4) for fellowships,
grants-in-aid, etc. for the advanced training of a select few. In
other words, the partnership he envisioned was pretty much a one-way
street. That is not surprising, given the situation at the time.
The younger churches needed friends and supporters to help them
grow to maturity. That help would come from the West.
In the last paragraph of his report Mr. Morris observed that one
of the terms he heard constantly from younger churchmen in his travels
was reference to the “Asian revolution.” “My quick
impression,” he went on observe, “is that in some respects
neither we nor they fully understand what this term means.”
It could mean that the future would involve far greater and more
radical changes in the younger churches in their relationship with
the West than was then envisaged. This could have profound influence
upon the growth and development of Christianity in Southeast Asia.
It could result ultimately in the growth and the development of
a new kind of Christianity oriented to Asia. “To the degree
that this may be so, much that we are and have been doing in our
mission effort would be running against the tides of time,”
Mr. Morris reported. “But such conjecture may be ill founded,”
he said,” “and certainly, as it stands here, it is based
on incomplete information. In a period of world revolution we must
be alert lest time and opportunity pass us by because we have been
too focused on salvaging something that must be shaken.”
Much has changed in the intervening fifty years. For one thing,
theological libraries in Southeast Asia and the institutional programs
they support are very different today than they were when Raymond
Morris visited this region. I have personally visited three theological
libraries in Asia that are more than equal to their task, including
the library here at Trinity Theological College, and the libraries
at Chung Chi College at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and
Nanjing Union Theological Seminary. I am certain that there are
other members of ForATL that would likewise fall into this category.
And I understand that the nature of theological education has likewise
changed, so much so that students no longer need to go abroad for
advanced degrees. Asian institutions are teaching Asian theology
at the graduate level. Again, I don’t pretend to understand
how these changes came to be, but the world described by Raymond
Morris report seems to be a thing of the past.
One consequence of the changes that have taken place over the past
five decades is that the relationship between Western and Asian
institutions has likewise changed. To be sure, there are still Western
institutions like the Foundation for Theological Education in Southeast
Asia that still provide support for theological education in this
region, but on a very different basis than before. It is significant,
for example, that the United Board for Christian Higher Education
in Asia recently moved its headquarters from New York to Hong Kong.
The relationship that is increasingly coming to be is that of a
partnership of equals, rather than that of benefactor and dependent.
The focus of my talk today is to address ways in which we can collaborate
together in ways that are mutually beneficial, ways in which we
can support one another’s missions, ways in which we can learn
from one another.
The first question one might ask is why international collaboration
matters. From the perspective of institutions in the United States
and Canada, the first reason is because it is something that is
expected of us in order to maintain our accreditation. The current
Association of Theological Schools accreditation standards mention
the “global” context of theological education or “globalization”
in twelve separate paragraphs. The very first paragraph, introducing
the section on “purpose, planning and evaluation,” ends
with the statement that the educational purpose of theological schools
“should continue the heritage of theological scholarship,
attend to the religious constituencies served, and respond to the
global context of religious service and theological education.”
Global concerns are to be included in school’s purpose statement
(1.2.1). Theological scholarship is to be informed by “a global
awareness” (3.2.0) in the context of “global diversities”
(3.2.1.3). Library collections should reflect the “global
scope of Christian life and thought” (3.2.3.2).
There is one whole section (3.2.4) on “globalization,”
by which the document understands “patterns of instructional
and educational practice that contribute to an awareness and appreciation
of global interconnectedness and interdependence, particularly as
they relate to the mission of the church.”
The document goes on to say that the schools’ curricula need
to “enable a knowledge and appreciation of the broader context
of the religious tradition, including cross-cultural and global
aspects” (4.2.1). Library collections need to “demonstrate
sensitivity to issues of diversity, inclusiveness, and globalization”
(5.1.2). Good stewardship of institutional resources requires that
a school pay attention “to the context, local and global,
in which it deploys its resources” (9). Even distance education
programs need to provide “sufficient interaction between teachers
and learners and among learners to ensure a community of learning
and to promote global awareness” (10.3.3.3).
What all of this means is that theological schools in North America
have a mandate to make certain that theological education be placed
in a global context. The ATS does not mandate how that be done,
but has provided some guidance about how this might be done. Indeed,
six entire issues of the ATS journal Theological Education are devoted
to globalization.
The choice of the word “globalization” is somewhat
unfortunate, as for many it brings to mind globalization in the
economic sphere, which, in turn, points to American hegemony. In
fact, what the word means in the ATS accreditation standards is
clearly the opposite: ATS would have its member institutions look
beyond North America and to come to understand that Christianity
is a world religion, and that North Americans would benefit from
learning more about the various expressions of the common faith.
Members of the American Theological Library Association are taking
the mandate to document world Christianity seriously. The World
Christianity Interest Group began meeting at the 1997 annual conference.
Papers have focused on such things as finding vendors for purchasing
titles published outside the west, and on creative ways of building
such collections. One suggestion was for denominational libraries
to form partnerships with their colleagues overseas and to set up
exchange agreements. For example, a Lutheran seminary in North America
might form a partnership with a Lutheran seminary in Asia. The seminary
in Asia would then gather documentation on Christianity in their
region and send it to the seminary in North America. The seminary
in North America would send something needed by the seminary in
Asia, such as a subscription to the ATLA Religion Database. Such
a partnership would be a win-win proposition. The North American
seminary would have primary documentation about Lutheranism in Asia,
and the Asian seminary would have better access to the literature
of theology. I’m not certain how many institutions have established
such partnerships, but it still seems to me to be a good idea.
The second thing the members of ATLA have done is to establish
the Special Committee of the Association for International Collaboration,
of which I am currently the chair. This Committee carries out a
number of functions. It serves as host to those attending the annual
conference who live outside the United States and Canada, greeting
the international attendees at the opening reception and hosting
them for a luncheon. It sponsors a round table discussion at the
annual conference at which members discuss efforts at international
collaboration. And it seeks to motivate ATLA institutions to collaborate
with international partners. It does so in several ways.
• ATLA helps to support the IFLA/OCLC Early Career Development
Fellowship Program which supports library and information science
professionals from countries with developing economies. The Fellowship
program provides advanced continuing education and exposure to a
broad range of issues in information technologies, library operations
and global cooperative librarianship. Since its inception in 2001,
the program has welcomed 38 librarians and information science professionals
from 26 countries. Because of ATLA’s support, one slot is
set aside for theological librarians. Unfortunately, some years
there are no qualified candidates. ForATL members are urged to apply
for this Fellowship. The application form is on the OCLC website.
• For the past three years the Committee has offered an international
collaboration grant. Collaboration might include, but is not limited
to, improving the documentation of world Christianity (collection
development, exchanges, etc.), professional development, improving
the tools of scholarship, and the like. To date four grants have
been awarded, one of which was based in Malaysia: “Training
and Networking for Malaysian Theological Libraries,” hosted
by the Malaysia Baptist Theological Seminary. In order to qualify
for this grant, collaborators must include at least one institutional
or individual member from a North American institution.
• ATLA is a supporter of the Theological Book Network, an
organization that ships books to libraries overseas. They receive
books from individuals, libraries, and publishers, then ship them
in bulk to institutions that need them. Often they will ship material
intended for distribution to several institutions in a region. To
date they have sent books to Asian institutions in Bangladesh, China,
India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
• The Committee has launched a theological libraries “wiki”
which is intended to be a handbook for theological librarians. It
was our intention that this should be an on-line version of the
manual prepared by Rita and John England, Ministering Asian Faith
and Wisdom: a Manual for Theological Librarians in Asia (Quezon
City: New Day Publishers, 2001), or The Librarian’s Manual
by LeAnne Hardy, Linda Lambert, and Ferne Weimer (rev. ed.; Cedarville,
OH: Association of Christian Librarians, 2008). We had hoped that
theological librarians in North America would be joined by librarians
around the world to create this manual, providing “best practices”
for others to consult. The wiki has gotten off to a bit of a slow
start, I’m afraid, partly because the software is difficult
to use. But I would encourage you to look at this. ForATL might
want to consider being one of the sponsors of this venture.
Within the last couple of years ATLA members also formed a World
Religions Interest Group, reflecting the growing awareness that
the curricula in ATLA schools increasingly put world Christianity
into its broader context. It is important for ATLA libraries to
have documentation to help their faculty and students understand
other religions. For some, the motivation is a continuation of traditional
missionary activity, while for others the motivation is to further
inter-religious dialogue. In either case they need primary texts
and reference works, along with selected secondary sources..
While on the topic of the American Theological Library Association,
let me say a few words about the advantages of membership. ATLA
draws individual memberships from around the world. All individual
members, whether from North America or elsewhere, have the same
membership rights and privileges. Formerly ATLA did not allow institutions
outside of the United States and Canada to join. Rather than having
international institutions join ATLA, ATLA wanted to encourage the
development of national and regional theological library associations.
But institutions from outside North America continued to apply for
membership. A few years ago the Board of Directors changed ATLA’s
policy and created a new category of membership—International
Institutional Members. This category has all the membership rights
and privileges as institutions in the United States and Canada,
with the exception that they do not have the right to vote. There
are three categories of rights and privileges enjoyed by International
Institution Members.
Under the heading of professional collaboration and development,
International Institutional Members, like members in North America:
• Can post jobs on the ATLA website
• Have access to the ATLA consultants program. ATLA maintains
a list of qualified consultants whose fee for a one or two-day consultation
will be paid by ATLA (other expenses would be born by the hosting
institution)
• Have access to ATLA consortial benefits, such as OCLC’s
FirstSearch and the ATLA Serials Exchange
In addition, registration fees for the annual conference are waived
for international attendees.
Secondly, International Institutional Members receive ATLA publications
at no extra cost, including the Summary of Proceedings of the Annual
Conference, the ATLA Newsletter, and the Theology Cataloging Bulletin.
Thirdly, International Institutional Members receive discounts
on ATLA products and services, including the ATLA Religion Database
(the premier index in theology and religion), ATLAS (an on-line
collection of fully digitized religion and theology journals), and
ATLA’s preservation products and services.
For more on International Institutional Membership, see the ATLA
website (atla.com), or contact Barbara Kemmis, Director of Member
Services, at bkemmis@atla.com.
Despite the creation of this new category of membership, ATLA remains
interested in helping to foster national and regional theological
library associations. One way is by sending members of the Special
Committee of the Association for International Collaboration to
attend conferences, which is how I came to be here. Members of this
committee have attended conferences of the Association of British
Theological and Philosophical Libraries (ABTAPL), the European Theological
Libraries Association (BETH), and Red Latinoamerica de Información
Teológica (RLIT). One of the primary purposes of visits such
as mine is to let librarians outside of the United States and Canada
learn more about ATLA and to identify ways in which we might collaborate
with one another.
In addition, ATLA has a special arrangement with BETH whereby ATLA
contributes to BETH a percentage of income from sales of ATLA products
to BETH member institutions. That is to say, if a theological library
belonging to a national theological library association in Germany
purchases the ATLA Religion Database, ATLA will give a portion of
the sale price to BETH. This then provides a regular source of income
for BETH. While I am not authorized to speak for the business side
of ATLA (as contrasted with the membership side), I understand from
Dennis Norlin, the Executive Director of ATLA, that ATLA would be
interested in making a similar arrangement with ForATL. Should ForATL
be interested in pursuing this possibility, you should contact Margot
Lyon, Director of Business Development, at mlyon@atla.com.
In addition, ATLA invites ForATL to recommend periodicals for indexing
in the ATLA Religion Database. Again, I cannot speak for the business
side of ATLA and can make no promises, but Dennis Norlin has told
me that ATLA is interested in expanding its coverage of international
theological literature. Of course, it does cover periodicals from
around the world already. But ATLA would welcome the cooperation
of regional associations like ForATL in identifying the most important
journals in this region—the ones that are used regularly in
teaching and research, and so, would be the most beneficial to have
indexed. What they would like would be for ForATL to select the
most important journals, and send one or more issues to ATLA for
evaluation. If the journals are in a non-Western language, it would
be useful to include English abstracts, if at all possible.
Now I would like to shift gears a bit and talk about how one specific
library, Yale Divinity Library, has carried out international collaboration.
While Yale might not be typical of North American theological libraries,
its case is, I believe, instructive. Yale has a long history of
interest in international collaboration, an interest that has changed
in the ways it has been manifested over time. This interest began
more than a century ago with the establishment of the Day Missions
Library. This Library was begun by George Edward Day and his wife
Olivia Hotchkiss Day, after he retired as a professor of Hebrew
language at Yale. Initially this collection was formed to help train
missionaries. The Days donated this collection to the Divinity School
in 1892, with an endowment to support it. When the Divinity School
moved to its present location in 1932, three collections were brought
together to form the Yale Divinity Library. At that time the Day
Library made up some two thirds of the Divinity Library’s
32,000 volumes.
Soon after that move, Kenneth Scott Latourette, the D. Willis James
Professor of Missions, convinced Raymond Morris that the scope of
the Day Library should change from a collection preparing missionaries
to a collection focused on the history of Christian missions. This
change in focus meant that the Library began collecting documentation
of Roman Catholic and Orthodox missions in addition to the documentation
of Protestant missions.
In the late 1940s John R. Mott, an ecumenical and missions leader
in the first half of the twentieth century, who won the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1947, donated his personal papers and the archives of several
organizations with which he was involved to the Divinity Library.
While these papers would not be formally organized for three more
decades, they formed the core of what would become the Divinity
Library’s collections of manuscripts and archives.
In 1968 the National Council of Churches of Christ established
a program to encourage China missionaries to donate their personal
papers to an established repository. If they did not have another
repository in mind, they were encouraged to donate their papers
to Yale Divinity Library. Raymond Morris spent the first years of
his retirement criss-crossing the United States to publicize the
China Records Project. Yale now has the personal papers of more
than 350 China missionaries, which, together with the institution
archives in our collection, makes the Divinity Library archives
one of the best sources anywhere for the history of Christianity
in China before the Communist revolution. In 1975 Stephen Peterson,
Raymond Morris’ successor as Yale Divinity Librarian, hired
the Library’s first archivist, Martha Smalley, who continues
in that position to this day.
Since becoming Yale Divinity Librarian in 1991 we have made several
changes to our program. Most of those changes were made possible
by an endowment established by Kenneth Scott Latourette. Latourette
left his estate to support the Day Missions Library. Mr. Latourette
died in 1968, with income from his estate going to support two maiden
aunts. After they had died in 1982, income from that fund started
to come to the Library. The first thing we did was to expand the
scope of the collection from a narrow focus on the Christian missionary
movement to include documentation produced by the churches founded
by missionaries; that is, the Day collection now focused on world
Christianity. To collect that documentation we worked closely with
the area studies curators at Yale to establish approval plans for
materials in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
We further expanded our program at the beginning of this decade
with the establishment of the Kenneth Scott Latourette Initiative
for the Documentation of World Christianity, a proactive program
through which we identify documentation that complements our collection
and arrange to have it microfilmed. We have filmed material at the
World Council of Churches and the University of Edinburgh. We have
current projects underway at the Bible College of Victoria in Australia
and at Uganda Christian University. Next week I am traveling to
Ahmedabad in India to sign an agreement to microfilm the archives
of the Church of North India held by the Gujarat United School of
Theology. Other projects are under discussion.
In addition to building our collection, we have also attempted
to encourage the building of archives around the world. Martha Smalley
attended a conference sponsored by the International Association
of Mission Studies held in Rome in 2002. One of the consequences
of that conference was that Martha and Rosemary Seaton from the
School of Oriental and African Studies in London authored a pamphlet
called Rescuing the Memory of our People (New Haven, CT: Overseas
Ministries Study Center [distributor], 2003), which was intended
as a primer for those establishing archival collections. This pamphlet
has now been translated into Chinese, French, Portuguese, Spanish,
and Swahili. A Russian translation is in the works.
It was at the Rome conference that we first came into contact with
Trinity Theological College. In March 2005 Trinity invited Martha
Smalley to come to Singapore as a consultant on how to handle the
archival resources of the churches that support Trinity. Trinity
used her report in shaping its expanded library and archival collections.
Soon thereafter we approached the United Board for Christian Higher
Education in Asia about establishing a program to improve the documentation
of Christianity in Asia. They agreed to sponsor a small consultation
that would carry out a feasibility study. We contacted Michael Poon
to ask whether Trinity would be willing to host this consultation,
and Trinity readily agreed. In the end four institutions attended
this consultation, held in October 2005: Yale Divinity Library,
Trinity Theological College, Hong Kong Baptist University, and Payap
University. The participants in the consultation agreed that there
was a need to improve documentation of Christianity in Asia. We
observed that the period before ca. 1950 was pretty well documented
in Western mission archives, but that since then documentation is,
at best, spotty. Some churches do an admirable job of gathering
their archival records, while others do less well. If one were to
try to trace the growth of theological education in Southeast Asia,
it might, in fact, be a daunting task. Where would one find the
sources?
The participants in this consultation agreed that it was not only
feasible, but would be highly desirable, to establish a program
to improve the documentation of Christianity in Asia. We agreed
on the following programs:
1. We would establish a collaborative web presence to facilitate
communication between the partner institutions (see http://www.library.yale.edu/div/DCIA/index.html)
2. The Consortium would focus most of its energy on collection development,
both print and archival resources. The first step would be to conduct
a survey of regional church bodies and other ecclesial organizations
to determine what they publish and the state of their archives.
The consortium would identify “at-risk” materials that
might be candidates for preservation microfilming. And members of
the consortium would seek to fill in gaps in their holdings about
Christianity in their region, and to obtains copies of missionary
archives documenting their history.
3. The Consortium would seek to build bridges with regional institutions
(schools and ecclesial bodies), including holding regional consultations,
to improve awareness of the need for collecting archival resources
(preserving the memory of our peoples).
We submitted a proposal to the United Board for funding, but, unfortunately,
our proposal was not funded. After some consideration, the four
institutions decided to move forward without outside funding. Improving
documentation just seemed too important not to do so. So we constituted
ourselves as the Documentation of Christianity in Asia Consortium.
Of course, without additional funding, the work has had to move
forward more slowly than we originally intended. But move forward
it has.
Both Trinity Theological College and Hong Kong Baptist University
have held regional consultations that brought together representatives
of churches in their areas to talk about what documentation is currently
being gathered and to encourage ecclesiastical agencies to preserve
their archives.
As one of the outcomes of Trinity’s consultation, three Malaysian
seminaries expressed an interest in participating in the Consortium:
Malaysian Theological Seminary, Sabah Theological Seminary, and
the Methodist Theological School.
Our current project is to survey what resources are out there.
Yale created an Access database that can be used to identify archival
resources available in the region. Thousands of records have been
entered into this database listing archival resources, where they
are held, and who is managing them. Members of the Consortium will
meet this week to discuss progress and next steps.
Another collaborative arrangement we have made is with Trinity
Theological College. They have agreed to send us books and other
printed material documenting Christianity in Singapore. In return,
rather than sending specific titles to Trinity, we have agreed to
supply photocopies of articles requested by their graduate students
and faculty. In this way they have access to the breadth of our
research collections, rather than just to a title or two. So far
the exchange seems to be working to everyone’s satisfaction.
One final word. When I learned that ForATL is interested in producing
an index of theses in the various libraries, I took the liberty
of contacting Robert Jones at the Theological Research Exchange
Network (TREN). For some years now TREN has been building a collection
of theological theses, dissertations, and other papers. They now
have a collection of more than 10,000 titles from more than seventy
institutions. TREN indexes the theses and then distributes them,
either in paper, or on microfiche, or, now, in digital form. Yale
Divinity School has sent S.T.M. theses to TREN for more than twenty
years. Doing so accomplishes several things:
1. By listing the title in their database, TREN greatly increases
the visibility of the thesis.
2. TREN distributes theses to those who want to read them (for a
fee); usually theses are non-circulating. Distributing them fulfills
the purpose of furthering scholarship, which is the purpose of doing
research in the first place.
3. The author can rightly assert that his or her work was published.
4. We never have to worry that the thesis might be lost.
5. We use the fiche as the permanent copy of the thesis, thus saving
space.
If you send the theses as PDF files, there is no charge for indexing
and making them available. If you send paper files, TREN charges
a small fee for scanning the documents. This is just something to
think about. Why reinvent the wheel, when there is such a service
available. Mr. Jones is very much interested in pursuing this with
people from ForATL.
In conclusion, fifty years after Raymond Morris’ visit to
Southeast Asia, it’s time for a new beginning. When Mr. Morris
was here, the colonial era was beginning to go away. Today, it is
but a fading memory. But memory lives on, and for many of those
on both sides, the memories are sometimes bitter, and sometimes
bittersweet. But we must not let those memories poison the well,
we must move on. It is in that spirit that I appear before you today,
not denying what has gone before, but asking that we might explore
and establish mutually beneficial partnerships.
Thank you for your attention. |