BETH Bulletin: European Theological Librarianship

Incoming

Christine Love-Rodgers — 2025-06-20

New editors: Christine Love-Rodgers and Esther Jeon

Different Aspects of Sustainability Discussed at BETH’ s Annual Conference in Sarajevo

Jussi Hyvärinen — 2025-06-20

Reflections on BETH Conference 2024

Esther Jeon — 2025-06-20

I first heard about BETH and the annual BETH Conference from Hannie Riley, its Vice-President and Librarian of Wycliffe Hall. Hannie encouraged me to attend the 2024 Conference in Sarajevo, and was instrumental in making it happen. Thanks to the generous sponsorship of BETH funded by Libertree, I was able to enjoy the wonderful hospitality and beautiful historical sites of Sarajevo, as well as immerse myself in the stimulating talks and ideas of the Conference upon the theme of ‘Sustainability in European Theological Libraries’. I am grateful to BETH for delivering a stellar conference, to Libertree for their sponsorship of the conference as well as my attendance, and to all the delegates who were so welcoming despite the fact that my librarianship journey has been but a brief one.

Editors' Preface

Hannie Riley — 2025-06-20

Wellbeing Collection

Dani Fox — 2025-06-20

New College students are in the middle of the exam crunch and the library is full of frantic faces. In order to help alleviate some of the stress the students are feeling, the EdHelp team, led by Margaret Redpath, Viktoria Nolte, Xiaowei Jie, and Agnieszka Robertson, have set up a Wellbeing Collection in the Library. Here, students can find QR codes for nature sounds and classical music, links to audiobooks, and information about the Student Wellbeing services the University offers. It is a great way to encourage students to take breaks and not let the stress of exams and final assessments affect their mental health. The students have been appreciative of the EdHelp team’s efforts and have made use of the resources they have provided.
My contribution to the collection was some colouring sheets created from images of New College and the Library. The images were taken from familiar sights around the school and provide the students a creative outlet during the exam period. The colouring sheets were made using a combination of Adobe Photoshop and an online image generator. Our plan is to use the sheets in future engagement events, as they offer a great way for people of all ages to connect with our collections.

The Taylor Institution Library and St Giles ' Fair

Daniel Drury — 2025-06-20

Atla Annual 2025

ATLA — 2025-06-20

Location: Omni William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Dates: 18th June - 21nd June 2025

The 53rd Annual Conference of BETH

BETH — 2025-06-20

Location: Stavanger, Norway
Dates: 21-24 September 2025

ABTAPL Spring Conference 2026

ABTAPL — 2025-06-20

Location: Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford, Oxford
Dates: 26th - 28th March 2025

Ecclesiastical Libraries: Public History, Educational Communities and Use of the BeWeb Portal

Donatella Bellardini — 2025-06-20

The General Library of the Barnabite Fathers Historical Studies Centre is an Ecclesiastical Cultural Institute, registered in the Registry of Ecclesiastical Cultural Heritage, in the Registry of Italian Libraries, and adheres to the PBE Pole of the National Library Service (SBN) through the CeiBib project .

The Congregation of the Clerics Regular of Saint Paul, called Barnabites, in the
rediscovery and valorization of its own “spiritual gifts”, which are properly educational, has decided, concerning the Study Centre - General Library and General Historical Archive - to broaden its mission by also opening up to "younger" users, in particular for the Library - which is a library of conservation and specialized research. The starting point was, therefore, precisely the charisma of the Congregation and the awareness of how libraries are called today to recognise their centrality as an active part of the Educating Community, to combat educational poverty and broaden the horizons of children and young people. Therefore, the General Library, through community engagement and sustainable initiatives, collaborates with schools of all levels up to the university, with institutions, the local community, and professional associations, experimenting with new, more engaging and effective teaching and learning strategies for religious history, in accessible ways for all.

The Preservation and Protection of Gazi Husrev-beg Library Holdings through Digitisation and Microfilm

Ejla Curovac — 2025-06-20

Gazi Husrev-beg Library in Sarajevo, founded in 1537, is the oldest continuously operating library in the region. Throughout its nearly 500-year history, the library has undergone several relocations, with its most recent restoration completed next to the original building. The library began microfilming its holdings in 1958, with the first phase of digitization starting in 1998. This was a pioneering effort in Bosnia and Herzegovina, driven by challenges related to the protection of physical materials, technological limitations, inventory management, and metadata organization. In 2017, the Gazi Husrev-beg Digital Library was officially launched, providing online access to a wealth of archival materials, including manuscripts, monographs, serial publications, and historical newspapers. The collection is searchable, with OCR (Optical Character Recognition) applied to enhance user accessibility. Categories such as Archives, Photo Library, Islamic Community Newspapers, and Manuscripts (including a UNESCO-recognized collection) are available for research. The library employs advanced scanning equipment, like the ZEUTSCHEL Book Scanner, to preserve its holdings in high-resolution formats. This digital initiative aims to preserve valuable cultural heritage and offer global access to Bosnian and Ottoman history, while protecting original materials from further decay. The library continues to expand, ensuring long-term access to its vast resources.

Facsimile Editions of Manuscript Books in the Collections of the Scientific Library of Volyn Orthodox Theological Academy

Vladyslav Fulmes — 2025-06-20

Each nation preserves and protects its book heritage, takes care of it, studies, popularises and interprets it, thus bringing its achievements from the past to the future, and passing them on from ancestors to descendants. Ukraine has its own rich and vivid history of ancient book publishing. Among Ukrainian national monuments, the origins of which lie in the depths of time, the manuscript book occupies a special place. Each manuscript work is unique, and has an artistic face unique to it. Over the past decades, the work of returning original manuscripts to Ukraine in the form of facsimile editions has intensified. Previously inaccessible Ukrainian manuscripts stored in Austria, Italy, Poland, the USA, France and other countries, have become available to all those wishing to thoroughly study the most valuable monuments of national culture and understand their value in illuminating historical processes. As part of the project “Returning Cultural Heritage to Ukraine”, the efforts of the Gorobets publishing house, as well as other publishing houses, have resulted in the return of many ancient Ukrainian manuscript books in the form of facsimile copies.

The Scientific Library of the Volyn Orthodox Theological Academy (Lutsk, Ukraine) has a considerable number of collections. Among the large number of books, the facsimile editions stored in the library's collections deserve special attention, the description of which is given below.

Digitisation of Old Prints and Archival Collections of Monastic Provenance in Church Theological and State Libraries as a Chance for Sustainable Development

Tomasz Stolarczyk — 2025-06-20

Theological old prints and archival collections are the pride and joy of every monastic and state library. They are of interest primarily to professional theologians, book and church historians, bibliologists, museologists, but also amateur bibliophiles. Due to their uniqueness and importance for human culture, they are priceless and closely guarded in the mentioned libraries. Thanks to the digitisation of old prints and archival collections, it is possible to study and view them without leaving home or the workplace.

The role of digital libraries and archives is the preservation of knowledge, and democratising information access by providing better access to archival and library materials via IT networks. This enables education and lifelong learning support, as well as a community building, communication, and collaboration platform. Digital libraries supplement the existing resources, support popularisation of library and archive collections, and can merge archival and library materials that are physically stored in different locations, for example in different institutions, even outside the country's borders.

The Spanish Library Church Union Catalogue: A Success Story

Fran Cortez — 2025-06-20

La ABIE (the acronym for Spanish Church Librarians Association) is composed of technicians who work in any Church Library (universities, bishops, schools, monasteries, religious orders, seminaries…), so is an association of people, not institutions.

From its birth, one of the aim objectives was to implement a union catalog. There were some attempts in the past, but only in 2023 was the project successfully developed due to the difference in approach: the project would be simpler and had to be economically sustainable.

The first was achieved by opting only for a collective catalog with Vufind, leaving for later other functionalities that would lead us to a network of libraries. The second was achieved by establishing a very tight pricing policy for participation in the project. Libraries would pay an annual fee based on their size.

Currently, the union catalog, hosted in the URL catalogo.bibliotecaseclesiasticas.es has 6.2 registers and it is expected to reach 8 million, with great prominence of books on Religion, Theology, Humanities, Philosophy, History, and Social Sciences, from 16^th to 18^th centuries.

AI, New Extractivism and Eco-media Literacy

Mario Hibert — 2025-06-20

Digital technologies and ongoing cognitive transformations has changed not only books but also language, authorship, and what it means to be human. Computational humanity (interconnections between humans and computational media) therefore brings questions that in library and information science research employ connecting the ideas that come traditionally from the social sciences and the humanistic disciplines into the world of machine learning and AI design, particularly black boxes of data-driven society whose invisible walls of algorithmic factory define entirely new forms of exploitation and labour that persists in the ideological promotion of unlimited economic growth.

Discard to Discovery: Empowering Majority World Theological Libraries

Hannie Riley — 2025-06-20

In an era when information is paramount, ensuring equitable access to information and knowledge remains a significant challenge as information divides persist and even widen across many parts of the world. Through various channels, my roles as the college librarian at Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford, Chair of ABTAPL (Association of British Theological and Philosophical Libraries) and Vice-president of BETH (Bibliothèques Européennes de Théologie - European Theological Library Association), have provided numerous opportunities to understand diverse situations of theological libraries globally and the unique environments in which they operate. From many conversations with theological librarians over the past few years, I have learned that we all face difficulties and struggles in our rapidly ever-changing world, influenced by technology innovation, political instability and the demographic shifts in Christianity from the Global North to the Global South (i.e., Africa, Asia, Latin America, Oceania).

The Changes in the Information Culture of Theological Research

Matti Myllykoski — 2025-06-20

In this article about changes in the information culture in theological research, I approach the topic openly and inclusively. I try to outline the question in a way that shifts the attention from the scientific community to partly outside of it, more precisely, between the scientific community and the surrounding reality. Amidst the drastic changes that have taken place in recent decades, the role of the library has also changed radically. It can no longer position itself as a mediator of information, in other words, as a manager of a collection of printed books, but must constantly search for its new role in the cross-pressures of the digital revolution, the greed of commercial publishers, mundanity of social media, and open publishing.digital

'New Wine in Old Bottles ’

Jon Purcell — 2025-06-20

This article examines the sustainability of Catholic Seminary libraries when their parent institutions close, a not uncommon situation in the UK in recent decades. What happens to the seminary libraries, built over many decades, will they be relocated, dispersed or sold or is there another or different existence possible to help them to survive? Two British seminary libraries -St Cuthbert’s Seminary, Ushaw and St John’s Seminary, Wonersh, both established in the C19th and with excellent libraries but closed in 2011 and 2022 but their libraries still exist for new and sustainable futures. The reasons for their survival and a sustainable future are examined together with critical success factors in this scenario.

Managing a Small Theological Library

Winette Field — 2025-06-20

This open access title from Atla is aimed at both those who are not already based in small theological libraries (STL) and those who are. Indeed, the introduction focuses on whether readers have what it takes to work in STL. An interesting premise and here we hit the first fundamental difference between Europe and the USA: the nature of the role and title of STL librarians.