Considering Starting a Library At My Parish...Anyone Else Have One?

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There is such a wealth of information out there (books, tapes, CDs and DVDs). Yet so many good Church-going Catholics remain relatively uninformed. I have thought about, as part of my tithe on an ongoing basis, donating such resources to my parish (I would probably start by buying one of everything published by Catholic Answers).

The problem I see is how to administer the necessary functions of a library (all the recordkeeping and administrative work). Does anyone know of a parish that does something like this? How do the handle the administrative work?
 
My parish has one, but it is only open on Sundays and during CCD (one eve/week). Mainly (I think) due to staffing. We have a full time adult education position and she takes care of it, although she has a lot else on her plate (we are a large parish–close to 4000 families).

I think it is a fantastic idea. I love browsing there. But it does require work and dedication by someone.
 
You might find some helpful info in this previous thread: How to fix your parish library

My parish has one, but I believe it’s only open after each Mass on Sundays and is simply staffed by a volunteer.

Don’t get too discouraged about the logistics. All you need is a place for the books and a means of keeping track of who checks out what when. Put a bin in the back of the church for returns. Put a blurb in the parish bulletin that you’re collecting donations of reliable materials and/or money for the project. Contact Catholic publishers and plead poverty to see what they might be willing to send you. 🙂
 
Definitely something that’s been on mind also, and too many of the Catholic Churches that I have visited do not have very much available to parishioners. Catholic Answers can provide a great deal toward a remedy at all our parishes.

Presently I’m working with my K of C council to put together the same thing at our parish. The Knights of Columbus offers it’s members a treasure trove of inexpensive pamphlets that assist Catholics in understanding the sacraments. These are laso available in other languages, which can be helpful since there are so many immigrants in our Church.
Go to the K of C website and locate a council near you. They have published excellent brochures on everything from “The Act of Reconciliation” to the “Catechism of the Catholic Church.” And they could also assist you with another donation to your cause.

kofc.org/un/eb/en/about/activities/church/index.html
 
We have had one for years and it is simply on the honor system. We have had no problems…in fact we usually find we end up with more books than have been taken out.
 
We have a parish library with quite a collection of books. Although I am very active in the parish, I couldn’t tell you how you would go about checking out a book if you were interested…there are no published times that the parish library is open!

That said, we have had huge success with audio CD’s from Lighthouse Catholic Media. The CD’s are snapped up quickly. Our parish is small, so I simply subscribe to the CD of the Month Club to get 10 new CD’s every month. (There are lots of options available for larger parishes.) I put something in the bulletin each month encouraging people to “Listen, Learn & Share”. People listen to the CD’s and then put them back for others to listen to. It’s worked very well for evangelizing and educating folks.

Kathy
 
bkoz said:
There is such a wealth of information out there (books, tapes, CDs and DVDs). Yet so many good Church-going Catholics remain relatively uninformed. I have thought about, as part of my tithe on an ongoing basis, donating such resources to my parish (I would probably start by buying one of everything published by Catholic Answers).

The problem I see is how to administer the necessary functions of a library (all the recordkeeping and administrative work). Does anyone know of a parish that does something like this? How do the handle the administrative work?
Click to expand...
Take a class on library arts, and become familiar with the Dewey Decimal system. You can buy library record keeping supplies at most stationery stores - sign-out cards for the books, inserts for due dates, and that sort of thing.

Depending on how big your library is going to be, make sure you have a good filing system that allows you to locate things quickly.
 
We have a very nice parish library. We have a volunteer committee (I’m a member) headed up by a Librarian (she volunteers for this). She taught us how to catalogue books and we all spent time doing this. All of our books are catalogued, and they are checked out like in a regular library. It took a while to set it up initially, but it’s worth the effort. Recently, though, we were given money from an endowment and got a new computer and an autolibrarian system, so now the books are catalogued in the computer. I’m not that familiar with it so far. Anyway, that is not necessary, just convenient. If there is a librarian in your parish, maybe he or she would volunteer to help set it up and teach how to catalogue.

We meet 3 or 4 times a year for library business and order books once or twice a year through a local Catholic bookstore at discount rates. We also take donations, but there are stipulations to the donations, because we found people were dropping off any books they wanted to get rid of and many of them were musty and moldy or not suitable for a library in a Church. We also do AV material.

The library is open on the weekends between Masses, staffed by volunteers, but people also can go in during the week and check out a book. We have a poster that tells them how to do this.

The library is not as well-used as we would like it to be, so we have a promotional raffle, which has increased business somewhat. If you check out a book, you sign a raffle ticket, and then we have a drawing at the end of the month for a $10.00 gift certificate from a local bookstore. We don’t do this every month, though, and usually someone from the parish donates the money, mostly one of the library volunteers.

The initial setup is a lot of work, many volunteer hours were put into it, so be prepared to put a lot of time into it. And if you start out by asking for donations, that is a good way to get started, but be sure you have published the stipulations in your bulletin. We do have a budget to work with, thankfully, otherwise you have to find a way to raise some money to buy books. But it is a lot of fun, and a good way to meet other parishoners.

Good luck in your efforts.
 
bkoz said:
There is such a wealth of information out there (books, tapes, CDs and DVDs). Yet so many good Church-going Catholics remain relatively uninformed. I have thought about, as part of my tithe on an ongoing basis, donating such resources to my parish (I would probably start by buying one of everything published by Catholic Answers).

The problem I see is how to administer the necessary functions of a library (all the recordkeeping and administrative work). Does anyone know of a parish that does something like this? How do the handle the administrative work?
Click to expand...
I ran the library in my former parish, an excellent one the work of others who went before me. I have a library in the CCD office which I inherited and have added to. Other than the occasional catechist, nobody every used either. do a survey before you spend time and money on this and see what the parish wants. our diocese has an excellent circulating media library so we try not to duplicate resources, except those that get a lot of use by the catechists.
 
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