Like many congregations, our church has a small library. The collection is housed in a room with floor-to-ceiling shelves and a large conference table. There is seating for ten people in the room, and it is often used for meetings of small groups. There are currently just over 1,500 books in the collection. A small reference section contains bible commentaries, dictionaries, and atlases. There is a shelf of Bibles in various translations and versions. Theology, Bible Study, and Spirituality make up about little more than half of the collection. There are reasonable collections of faith formation, mission, and justice books.

I became the congregation’s librarian by default, in a way. I served as Interim Minister of Faith Formation for two years. The library was generally under the care of that position. We had a volunteer librarian who was a professional librarian with years of experience. She helped me choose software and create a digital catalog of the collection. She taught me how to use the software and organize the collection. The process of entering books into the software in a manner that made it possible to find books on the shelves was nearly completed when she died suddenly of an illness. At that time, I was coming to the end of my interim ministry and preparing to pass on the responsibilities of that position to others. As part of that process, I discovered that I was the only person in the church who knew the passwords to the library software and understood how the collection was organized. After consulting with the Congregation's Lead Pastor, I volunteered to become the unpaid librarian.

The job turned out to be larger than I expected. I knew several boxes of books were in the library, and I set out to deal with them. It took me months to sort through the boxes. Some of the books in the boxes were added to the collection, some were duplicates of books already in the collection, and many were books that someone had donated that, while being good books, didn’t fit into the categories of the limited collection.

Eighteen months after I became the librarian, we held a book giveaway. We set up tables in the fellowship hall and offered books to the congregation and our sister congregation, which shares our building. The books were displayed and offered for two weeks, and we gave away several boxes of books. Four boxes of books left over from the giveaway are being donated to various book sales in our community.

I thought removing the excess books from the library would make the collection more accessible and the room more comfortable. I was correct in that assumption. Accompanied by improvements in how books are organized and displayed, circulation has increased. I had not anticipated that people would continue donating books to the library. Most donations come in the form of books left in the room. Sometimes, it is just one or two books. Sometimes, people drop off boxes of books. Only a tiny percentage of the books donated fit into our collection. We do not have a fiction collection but receive many donations of fiction. Most bible study and spirituality books donated are ones the library already has in its collection.

There have been weeks when I showed up at the library to shelve returned books when the number of books donated exceeded those borrowed and returned. When I take a week off from going to the library, books pile up on tables around the room, even though I am careful to leave an empty cart for donations and new acquisitions.

We are a small library, and having a more extensive collection is not one of our goals. We host an annual book sale by a local independent bookstore that produces credit at the store that we use to add new titles to the collection. I anticipate the books that will circulate. The purpose of our library is not to have a static collection for display but to have a circulating library that serves our congregation. Our software lets me pay attention to which books are being checked out of the library.

At some point, we plan to develop a process of removing books that do not circulate from the collection to make shelf space for those our congregation is interested in reading. I, however, do not possess the right personality to trim the collection. Like the church library, my personal library seems to keep growing beyond the capacity of my shelves. Despite having shed 30 boxes of books when we moved into our retirement home, we still have books piling up beyond the capacity of our shelves. I just counted ten titles on my desk, which is not a large surface. In my defense, I am using some of those books as references for a writing project and others for a class I teach. In addition, the nonfiction book I am currently reading is on our dining room table, and there is a small stack of poetry books beside my recliner. I also have a stack of books that I intend to read next. I never want to run out of books to read.

Although I never got to know her well, I am particularly fond of the church’s previous librarian. As I work with the collection, I can appreciate her skill at organizing the collection and her attentiveness to detail. I can also see her love of books. She was no better at shedding books from the collection than I. While organizing, I found a box labeled “to be catalogued” but containing duplicates of books already catalogued. She had pulled them from the shelves, reused a box that once held books to be catalogued, and kept them though I do not know for what purpose.

When the time for me to step aside and allow a new librarian to take over my job comes, I know I will be leaving problems for my successor. I hope they are fewer than the ones I inherited, but it remains to be seen whether or not that will be the case.