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Physical Collections and the  
21st-century Theological Library
Derek J. Rieckens, St. Michael’s Abbey
Elizabeth Young Miller, Moravian College and Theological Seminary
Karl Stutzman, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary
Gerrit van Dyk, Brigham Young University

ABSTR AC T Collection management in libraries has changed over 
the past generation in libraries and will undoubtedly continue to do 
so. In a world of e-books, physical space pressure, consortial recip-
rocal borrowing, blossoming journal prices, shrinking monograph 
budgets, and declining print circulation, what is the role of the phys-
ical collection in a religious studies or theological library? In this 
panel discussion, three librarians from various types of religious 
libraries explore this question through their respective institutional 
contexts. 

Presentation slides are available at: static.sched.com/hosted_files/
atlaannual2020/2c/ATLA%20Collections%20Panel%202020.pptx.

INTRODUCTION

Two decades ago, it was not unusual to hear people outside the 
library profession (and even some inside the profession) predicting 
the demise of print materials. According to these individuals, by this 
time in the 21st century (that is, 2020), “everything would be digi-
tal.” Some even thought that libraries as a whole would be obsolete. 
However, data has shown that, while physical collection usage has 
declined, our patrons still visit the library and continue to check 
out physical materials, albeit at a lower rate than a generation ago.

This session will highlight the print material collecting strategies 
and practices of three widely different institutions: St. Michael’s 
Abbey, Moravian College and Theological Seminary, and Anabap-
tist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS), represented by Derek J. 
Rieckens, Elizabeth Young Miller, and Karl Stutzman, respectively. 
After introducing their libraries, each panelist will respond to three 
questions in light of our session objectives.

http://static.sched.com/hosted_files/atlaannual2020/2c/ATLA%20Collections%20Panel%202020.pptx
http://static.sched.com/hosted_files/atlaannual2020/2c/ATLA%20Collections%20Panel%202020.pptx


110  AT L A 2020 PROCEEDINGS

INSTITUTIONAL BACKGROUND

St. Michael’s Abbey
Unlike most Atla member institutions, St. Michael’s Abbey is not a 
degree-granting institution. It is a canonry of the Order of Canons 
Regular of Prémontré, i.e., the Praemonstratensians, i.e., the Norber-
tines. The Norbertines are a Catholic religious order that follows the 
Rule of St. Augustine, as opposed to the, perhaps more familiar, Rule 
of St. Benedict. Norbertines, like other Augustinian orders, lead a 
way of life that straddles the line between the more contemplative 
life of monks and the more active life of diocesan clergy: they live 
in community and pray together throughout the day, but they also 
perform many forms of ministry, such as administering parishes, 
hospital and prison chaplaincies, writing, and leading retreats. St. 
Michael’s Abbey is currently home to 81 Norbertine canons, includ-
ing nearly fifty priests and over thirty seminarians.

The library at the abbey exists chiefly to serve the internal needs 
of the Norbertine community, but its collections have grown in 
quantity and quality in ways that have led the canons to make their 
resources available to outside researchers. The abbey possesses 
roughly 70,000 volumes, but only about 16,000 of those are cataloged. 
Chief collecting areas include biblical studies, lives of the saints, 
dogmatic theology (with special attention to Augustine and Aquinas), 
church history, monasticism, philosophy, liturgy, and literature for 
leisure reading. The library houses a few special collections revolv-
ing around church history and sacred music. The formal library 
program is in an early stage of development. The community was 
just introduced to its first-ever OPAC at the beginning of the year; 
before that, there was no catalog of any kind. The library has an FTE 
of exactly one, and that position is currently open.

Moravian College and Theological Seminary
As the information literacy and seminary liaison librarian, I work 
with both undergraduate and seminary students. Moravian is 
comprised of an undergraduate college, a theological seminary, and 
a graduate school, with one library serving all degree programs and 
populations. The total student FTE is 2,149 (Janet Ohles, pers. comm., 
May 28, 2020), with approximately 63 part-time seminary students 
and 14 full-time seminary students. Of these seminary students, the 



Panel Discussions  111

majority are commuters, with about a handful of online students and 
a similar number of residential students. The average age of semi-
narians is 43 (Randy D’Angelo, pers. comm., April 6, 2020), and for 
many students, a degree from the seminary represents a second or 
even third career. Certainly, these demographics impact collection 
decisions, which I will discuss a bit later in the presentation.

Currently, the library has eight FTEs. However, we are down two  
positions and it is unclear, given the current situation, what will 
happen with these positions in the future.

The library has over 370,000 items. The seminary’s collection, 
classed primarily in the Bs, focuses on Moravian history, polity, and 
doctrine at a comprehensive level. The following areas are collected 
at a study level: biblical studies, chaplaincy, church history, clini-
cal counseling, pastoral materials, spiritual direction, and spiritual 
formation.

The collection aims to support the seminary’s curriculum. Mora-
vian Theological Seminary currently offers four degree options, with 
an additional one in the works. These degree programs include the 
following:

• Master of Divinity (MDiv)
• Master of Arts in Chaplaincy (MACh)
• Master of Arts in Theological Studies (MATS)
• Master of Arts in Clinical Counseling (MACC)

The seminary also offers three certificate programs in biblical stud-
ies, formative spirituality, and spiritual direction.

Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary
Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary is a small, freestanding 
seminary in Elkhart, Indiana with about 100 students. We offer both 
MA and MDiv programs, with both distance and campus options. 
About half of our student body takes classes from a distance. Many of 
our campus students are international. Though some of our students 
are a more “traditional” age, our students span a range of age groups. 
AMBS Library has a print collection of around 100,000 volumes and 
an expansive e-book and e-journal collection. We have two librarians.



112  AT L A 2020 PROCEEDINGS

QUESTION 1: HOW DO YOU BALANCE COLLECTING BOTH ELEC-
TRONIC AND PRINT RESOURCES, ESPECIALLY CONSIDERING THE 
COVID-19 LOCKDOWN?

St. Michael’s Abbey
At St. Michael’s Abbey, print still is the default and will remain so for 
the foreseeable future. There are many reasons for this:

• The library does not support a degree program, so there is not 
much urgency about having access to the very latest scholar-
ship

• A focus on internal community needs and special collections for 
visitors. It is a sort of combination personal library and special 
research collection. Internal needs revolve around personal 
prayer, homily preparation, ongoing personal study, and leisure 
reading, all of which have been adequately served by print. The 
special collections consist of archival papers and rare books, 
which are inherently physical.

• Long-established habits of use. Never having had curated 
e-resources, the community doesn’t seem to feel their absence.

• The formal library program is in a very early stage of develop-
ment. With an FTE of one, no professional staff prior to 2016, 
no automation systems prior to 2017, and tens of thousands of 
uncataloged volumes, the top priority has been to direct limited 
resources into wrangling the existing print collection. Accord-
ingly, curating electronic content has not even shown up on the 
radar.

• The Norbertine way of life.
 ˏ In this quasi-monastic setting, there is more of an inclination 

toward slow, deep reading, which tends to favor print.
 ˏ They also intentionally limit access to electronic devices. 

Desktop computers are available only in a dedicated 
computer room. Seminarians do not have personal electronic 
devices. This may be done both because of the moral dangers 
available online and because extensive absorption in the 
online world can detract from community life.

All these reasons conspire to sustain a preference for print resources.



Panel Discussions  113

Moravian College and Theological Seminary
Balancing electronic and print resources has been a challenge since 
I began working in libraries, and COVID-19 has only exacerbated 
the situation. In the humanities, such as theology, print remains the 
preferred format; this is certainly true for many seminary students 
who prefer print books. This preference may be due to their age and 
their comfort level with various forms of technology. Also, with a 
large commuter population, students typically come to the library 
to check out materials and, before COVID-19, had a lot of flexibility 
to do this, given the library’s extensive evening and weekend hours. 
However, the preference for print is greater among students in the 
MATS and MDiv programs. The MACC program tends to attract a 
younger demographic who prefer electronic articles from the field 
of psychology.

With that being said, during the COVID-19 lockdown, the Lehigh 
Valley has been a hotspot for the virus, and we just recently moved 
from the red phase—basically shelter in place—to the yellow phase. 
As a result, our print collection has been mostly unavailable to 
patrons. Neither can we get print books for students via interlibrary 
loan, nor is reciprocal borrowing available through several consor-
tia. However, there is a working document among other libraries 
in the Southeastern Pennsylvania Theological Library Association 
(SEPTLA), of which we are a part, noting what services they are 
providing. As the physical buildings themselves reopen, I would 
imagine this will be especially useful.

Certainly, there is a wish for print resources amidst social 
distancing. At Moravian, we began offering curbside pickup several 
days a week starting last week. We are using our general reference 
email to handle requests.

My colleagues and I have also been promoting e-books, online 
databases, free trials, and open access resources. Colleagues and I 
created the following research guide to share available resources 
with students: moravian.libguides.com/onlineresources. I would 
like to provide an example of how I used this research guide to 
assist a student. First, for some context—in February, I offered an 
information literacy session for the class Religion in the Ameri-
can Context and shared with students how to find both print and 
electronic resources for their required research paper. Using this 
research guide designed specifically to address resources available 
during COVID-19, I was able to assist one student in finding a chap-

http://moravian.libguides.com/onlineresources


114  AT L A 2020 PROCEEDINGS

ter in an e-book that she could use for this assignment. However, with 
limited to no access to our print resources, the professor decided to 
give students the option of writing a paper or taking a final exam.

To assist patrons during this lockdown period, I have worked with 
faculty to order e-books with unlimited access. A student actually 
reached out to me in May, asking if I could create a LibGuide high-
lighting these e-book titles for a summer course, which I was happy 
to do. E-books are serving as a work-around of sorts. However, as 
you may know, not everything is available as an e-book, nor can we 
sometimes afford these titles.

Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary
At AMBS, print has been our default format for monograph acqui-
sitions. Since COVID-19 hit, our default format for monographs has 
been electronic. Why print as a default? Some users state a prefer-
ence for it. I would say our users prefer print if they are on campus 
and our distance users prefer electronic. But there is crossover, too, 
so it is not a simple matter of user preferences. Really, what drives 
print purchasing are two factors: some monographs we need can’t be 
purchased in electronic format, and the licensing of e-books prevents 
full resource sharing. I also do not see e-books fitting our preserva-
tion priorities. In our current COVID-19 situation, we’re purchasing 
e-books as a default through June 30. We’re also licensing e-books 
that we already have in print—we purchased all the books available 
from our reserve list and we took Proquest up on a Print-to-E offer. 
One of the primary uses for print during COVID-19 has been liberal 
scanning, especially from reference and reserves, for persons who 
are working remotely. We created a COVID-19 library guide that indi-
cates our resources and special services in this strange time.

QUESTION 2: DO YOU HAVE ANY REGIONAL OR CONSORTIAL 
AGREEMENTS WHICH IMPACT YOUR COLLECTING OF PHYSICAL 
MATERIALS?

St. Michael’s Abbey
The abbey neither belongs to a consortium nor participates in ILL, 
so these have not been components of the acquisition strategy. To 
speak of acquisitions more generally, the abbey has acquired its hold-



Panel Discussions  115

ings in a generally ad hoc, serendipitous, just-in-case manner. The 
collection has not so much grown as metastasized, mostly through 
purchases from secondhand dealers and donations large and small.

The backlog has gotten quite out of hand. The purchase of a large 
special collection in 2012 was the 15,000-volume straw that broke 
the camel’s back, forcing the abbey to face the backlog—or rather to 
hire a librarian to do so. Dealing with what they already have has 
taken priority over all else, including entering any sort of cooperative 
arrangement with other libraries. In short, they are not yet prepared 
for any cooperative collection management arrangement, because 
they don’t yet have a good handle on what they have, much less what 
they might be able to offer to other libraries or what they might need 
from other libraries through ILL or a consortium.

Moravian College and Theological Seminary
Moravian does participate in several reciprocal borrowing agree-
ments that have a small impact on collecting of physical materials. 
These reciprocal borrowing agreements include, on the local level, 
the Lehigh Valley Association of Independent Colleges (LVAIC), on the 
regional level, SEPTLA, and, on the national level, the Atla Reciprocal 
Borrowing Program. When I am processing book donations, I look 
to see which LVAIC and SEPTLA libraries own a title. The holdings 
of LVAIC and SEPTLA institutions play more of a role when it comes 
to weeding decisions, which I will discuss later.

Interlibrary loan plays a greater role when it comes to collec-
tion development. Clearly, there are lots of wonderful print books, 
and our library, while it has a solid book budget, cannot afford to 
purchase them all. If a title is outside of our price range—for example, 
over $100—and does not directly support the seminary’s curriculum, 
we rely on interlibrary loan. The MATS students working on theses 
probably utilize interlibrary loan the most for print resources.

When it comes to owning a complete run of a series that other 
LVAIC or SEPTLA libraries may have, cost and/or the fit with the 
collection are considered. Again, if the book aligns with the curricu-
lum, it will be purchased. If not, we will rely on interlibrary loan or 
direct reciprocal borrowing for missing volumes in a series.

Similar to the Abbey, Moravian does not have a demand-driven 
platform set up. With that being said, nearly every title that a faculty 
member suggests is purchased. Those titles over $100 are shared 
with the dean of the seminary for his approval.



116  AT L A 2020 PROCEEDINGS

Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary
In 2016, AMBS Library revised its collection development policy and 
adopted what we call a “resource access policy.” Our resource access 
policy identifies four priorities: efficient discovery, expedited deliv-
ery, targeted acquisitions, and preservation priorities. At one point, 
print ownership covered all of those priorities: you needed to own 
it in print to discover, deliver, and preserve. New library technology 
allows us to frame print ownership as one mode of access and inter-
library loan, partnerships, and electronic materials as equally valid 
forms of access. In our priorities for acquisition and preservation, we 
prominently state our partnership with the Private Academic Library 
Network of Indiana (PALNI) and Mennonite Historical Library at 
Goshen College, a close partner for collecting Anabaptist-Mennonite 
resources. This affects our decisions on purchasing “research”-level 
materials, our subscriptions to print serials, our weeding practices, 
and our acceptance of donations. We see ourselves both benefiting 
from and contributing to our partnerships, so collecting in print is 
important to facilitate that. In terms of our purchase process, many 
of our e-books are selected from demand-driven plans through 
Proquest and, to a lesser extent, EBSCO. Our print books and some of 
our e-books are selected based on faculty requests—we buy anything 
faculty members request for teaching and materials they request for 
research purposes that are not already in PALNI. PALNI has a shared 
catalog and hold request system that makes it easy to discover and 
deliver materials from PALNI libraries, fitting into our priorities for 
efficient discovery and expedited delivery.

QUESTION 3: HOW HAVE YOU GONE ABOUT EVALUATING YOUR 
COLLECTION AND SELECTING MATERIALS TO WITHDRAW?

St. Michael’s Abbey
At the abbey, a weeding project is actively underway. What’s actually 
in the library has already been combed through, but what remains to 
be weeded is a large shipping container of mostly donations—an esti-
mated 20,000 volumes or so. Between two and three thousand books 
have already been deselected and sent off to Better World Books. 
Thousands more will doubtless follow, and the clock is ticking. The 
abbey is relocating—lock, stock, and barrel—during the final quarter 
of the year; COVID-19 hasn’t slowed that down. It would be ideal to 



Panel Discussions  117

have the backlog of books in storage completely weeded in time for 
the move, but the pace is limited by the availability of expert labor 
(isn’t it always?). The actual deselection decisions are being carried 
out entirely by one priest—and he has other jobs too.

I wrote a collection development policy that includes a supple-
mental policy on weeding. As I prepared the policy, I had to confront 
the fact that many of the data-driven deselection criteria commonly 
used in libraries, such as circulation statistics, have no place at the 
abbey. Lack of automation means there is no historic data. Instead, 
more general criteria take center stage, such as collecting scope, 
currency, and physical condition.

The weeding criteria generally run thus:

• First of all, items in designated special collections and items 
classified as “rare books” are generally exempt from weeding.

• Beyond that, items in the general collection are subject to 
review for deselection if any of the following criteria are met:
 ˏ Out of the library’s collecting scope.
 ˏ Available at other libraries nearby, including public and 

academic libraries.
 ˏ Outdated, inaccurate, or misleading information.
 ˏ Superseded edition.
 ˏ Physically damaged or deteriorated so as to make repair cost-

prohibitive.
 ˏ Duplicate copies: with the exception of titles currently used 

as formation textbooks, the library normally retains a maxi-
mum of two copies of a given edition of a work.

Moravian College and Theological Seminary
Yes, I have started the slow process of weeding because some areas of 
the B call number range are very tight. A systematic weeding project, 
however, has not occurred for a very long time.

Developing weeding criteria was a collaborative effort. I began 
in the summer of 2018 by drawing upon criteria shared at two Atla 
conference presentations; they include Leslie Engelson’s (2018) 
presentation “Managing a Large-Scale Weeding Project: When We 
All Pull Together,” and the panel presentation offered by Amy Limpit-
law, Michelle Spomer, and Suzanne Estelle-Holmer (2018), entitled 

“The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Art of Decluttering and 



118  AT L A 2020 PROCEEDINGS

Organizing Library Collections.” Once I pulled these criteria together 
and added some of my own, I sought input from a well-read semi-
retired faculty member who expressed interest in working with me 
on a weeding project. The weeding criteria we used are as follows: 

1)  Condition (dusty?)
2) # of check-outs (3+?)
3) Last date of circulation (within the last 5 years?)
4) Duplicate?
5) Publication date (within the last 20 years? — do not examine 

things published within the last 5 years)
6) Superseded edition?
7) Balance — Are there other, more recent books on this topic?
8) Foreign language? (most seminary students today can only 

read things in English)
9) Does this title support the curriculum?
10) How many libraries worldwide own this title? More than 100? 

Less than 25?
11) How many SEPTLA libraries own?
12) How many LVAIC institutions own?
13) How many benchmark institutions own?

Titles slated for deselection had colored slips placed in them. Mine 
were pink, and the faculty member, Steve’s, were blue. Others were 
then invited to either come to the library and view the titles, making 
comments on the slips, or add comments to a shared Google sheet. I 
solicited input from not only the seminary faculty but also from the 
following undergraduate departments: philosophy, global religions, 
psychology, history, political science, modern languages, and sociol-
ogy/anthropology. As a result of this project, there may have been 50 
titles removed from the stacks.

Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary
At AMBS, weeding is done, in part, through our understanding of 
preservation priorities. We tend to favor preserving materials where 
feasible. When materials are in poor condition, we decide whether 
to repair, replace, or withdraw based on recent circulation and state 
holdings. Recently, we undertook a significant shifting project and 



Panel Discussions  119

a reclass of our biographies. Before shifting and reclassing books, 
we decided first to withdraw some of them. When we did that, we 
based our decision on the most recent circulation (last 10 years). 
When we held last copies in the state that we wanted to withdraw, 
we sent them to Indiana University at Bloomington as part of the 
Academic Libraries of Indiana Last Copy Program if they were in 
stable condition.

CONCLUSION

Print collections remain alive and well in a variety of types of theo-
logical libraries. The questions raised in the question-and-answer 
period demonstrated that issues related to print collecting are 
current for theological librarians, even as collaboration and elec-
tronic access are important trends in collection development. For a 
variety of reasons, the panelists predict that the end of print collect-
ing in theological libraries is not happening anytime soon, even with 
temporary dramatic changes of course due to COVID-19. Theological 
librarians still need to be competent managers of print collections 
in the 21st century.

WORKS CITED

Engelson, Leslie. 2018. “Managing a Large-Scale Weeding Project.” 
Atla Summary of Proceedings 72: 276–85.

Limpitlaw, Amy, Michelle Spomer, and Suzanne Estelle-Holmer. 
2018. “‘The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up’: The Art of Declut-
tering and Organizing Library Collections.” Atla Summary of 
Proceedings 72: 131–40.


