









































Listen and Learn sessions  137

Collection Evaluation in the  
Small Library
Supporting a New Academic Program
Ryan Douglas Shrauner, Librarian, Baptist Seminary of Kentucky

ABSTRACT This study reviews some of the methods, results, and required 
resources for when a small library conducts a collection evaluation to sup-
port a new academic program. The Baptist Seminary of Kentucky launched 
the Institute for Black Church Studies in 2020. Two primary foci of the Institute 
are to offer an MDiv concentration and a graduate-level certificate in Black 
Church Studies. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the subject matter, at-
tention to the breadth as well as the depth of the currently available collec-
tion is required as a means of evaluating areas of strength and weakness. 
The unique, all-digital, cooperative structure of the library provides added 
complexities and opportunities to support this new program.

CONTEXT

In the fall of 2020, the Baptist Seminary of Kentucky (BSK) (https://
www.bsk.edu) launched the Institute for Black Church Studies with 
support from the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation (https://www.
baughfoundation.com). This was an important step in the continuing 
formation of the seminary and was driven by invitations from and 
relationships with Simmons College of Kentucky (https://www.sim-
monscollegeky.edu) and the National Baptist Convention of America 
(https://www.nbcainc.com). It is beyond the scope of this study to try 
and capture the full context and meaning of these developments for 
the life of the seminary and its stakeholders, but they are transfor-
mative. It was incumbent on the BSK library to ensure that sufficient 
resources were available to support this new academic program.

The library had previously collected intentionally, but not heavily, 
in Black Church Studies and has always operated with a cooperative 
library model. Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the institution this 
year, the seminary was first hosted by another seminary before re-

https://www.bsk.edu
https://www.bsk.edu
https://www.baughfoundation.com
https://www.baughfoundation.com
https://www.simmonscollegeky.edu
https://www.simmonscollegeky.edu
https://www.nbcainc.com


138  atLa 2022 ProCeedinGs

locating to the campus of a liberal arts college (and very recently to 
a more ecclesial setting). In anticipation of welcoming and support-
ing distance students, the library became an owning member of the 
Digital Theological Library (https://www.thedtl.org) in January 2020. 
This decision served the seminary very well when the pandemic hit 
and has continued to a great library model as the seminary grows, to 
the degree that the BSK library has shifted (nearly) all its book hold-
ings to digital formats; the book collection for BSK is, in reality, the 
DTL e-book collection. This is the collection which would need to be 
evaluated for sufficiency to support a Graduate Certificate and an 
MDiv concentration in Black Church Studies.

(EMERGING) METHODOLOGY

Unfortunately, this project emerged slowly. More correctly, it start-
ed as a straightforward check of the collection against a significant 
bibliography in Black Church Studies and expanded from there. The 
seminary encountered a compilation of contributions to the Twitter 
hashtag #BlackChurchSyllabus that was put forth by Jayme Wooten 
and collected on his website. There was a growing sense that this list 
alone might not completely reflect the local dimensions of teaching 
Black Church Studies and was supplemented by compiling the re-
quired and suggested readings from the syllabi of related courses 
taught at various institutions over several years by the director of 
the Institute for Black Church Studies, Dr. Lewis Brogdon. A third 
list to check against the catalog was taken from the “Recommended 
Reading” section of Henry Louis Gates’s The Black Church, This Is Our 
Story, This Is Our Song (2021), which is the companion volume to his 
PBS television series by the same title.

There are some data considerations which should be noted. The 
scope of this study is limited to the book collection, and these three 
lists contain a diversity of materials. This implies no judgment on 
form or relevancy, but merely reflects the focus of this study. Again, 
the study emerged more than it was planned: there was a significant 
time lapse (and some focused collecting done) between the data gath-
ered for the #BlackChurchSyllabus list (March 2021) and the other 
lists (January/February 2022).

https://www.thedtl.org


Listen and Learn sessions  139

INITIAL RESULTS (AND REGRETS)

The #BlackChurchSyllabus list identified 290 unique book titles, and 
(at the time searched) the library had access to 124 of those titles (43 
percent). After deduplication, the list generated by the collected syl-
labi had 221 unique book titles, and the library had access to 115 of 
those titles (52 percent). The “Recommended Reading” list from the 
Gates volume had 137 unique book titles, and the library had access 
to 82 of those (60 percent). So, the results were largely positive; there 
was very likely sufficient support to begin (which was good, because 
we had, indeed, already begun). There certainly appeared to be room 
to grow, but there was no indication that immediate or drastic action 
needed to be taken. The DTL e-book collection is a dynamic, growing 
collection that is being added to my many diverse libraries. It should 
also be noted that the results (especially those for the latter two lists) 
very likely benefited from some recent, intense acquisition of legacy 
collections by the DTL to its controlled digital lending collection from 
various sources, a kind of respective collecting coincidence.

These initial conclusions are tempered by the reality that these are 
snapshots only. Significant bibliographies in any field are seldom com-
prehensive, and the lists used to evaluate the book collection here are 
instructive but limited. The intention is, of course, to review the lists of 
works that were not held and consider collecting those titles, but also to 
resist the urge to merely add all the missing titles to the collection. That 
is not only time-consuming and expensive, but it also relies on a false 
narrative. It is necessary to seek a deeper, more helpful story when 
evaluating a collection, especially one in an interdisciplinary field like 
Black Church Studies; there is more than one opportunity for omission.

What started as a simple task of checking a collection against a 
significant bibliography eventually outgrew the simple data track-
ing practices that were initially implemented. This has prevented, or 
at least forestalled, asking other questions of the data—for instance, 
comparing these (admittedly diverse) lists to each other. Out of a total 
of 648 book titles contained in the three lists, 556 were unique titles, 
with only 92 titles overlapping. Due to the limited data tracking that 
was somewhat hurriedly employed, there is no easy way to identify 
what those titles are (or which titles were common to all three sets). 
It is regrettable that this was an emergent study and not a planned 
evaluation. While the results may or may not have been particularly 
interesting, better data management from the outset would have 
made them reasonably accessible.



140  atLa 2022 ProCeedinGs

ANALYSIS

In the interest of having a fuller picture of what data was available, 
a classification analysis was done on the deduplicated combined 
lists. There is a certain irony in identifying call numbers for e-books 
(or, more accurately, mostly for their print counterparts), but given 
limited time it was preferable to have one subject datapoint for 
each book. Library of Congress call numbers are not perfect, espe-
cially when applied to works by and about historically disenfran-
chised people and groups, but they are widely used in peer librar-
ies (and have proven useful here). It was hoped that by comparing 
call numbers and groupings between the titles held and those not 
held, potential gaps in the collection might be better illuminated 
than by lists of titles alone. The Library of Congress catalog itself 
was used to identify the majority of these call numbers. If a title 
was not held in that collection, other (mostly theological) catalogs 
were consulted.

It was decided that groupings of more than two books with the 
same (or substantially similar) call numbers would be more useful 
and manageable than looking at each individual call number. Even 
the initial data was instructive: 97 out 556 unique titles had the same 
call number—BR563.N4 (essentially history of Christianity related 
to African Americans). Classification is not an exact science, but it 
was surprising that 17.5 percent of titles from these lists shared the 
same call number. Again, analyzing the application of call numbers 
is a bit out of the scope of this project, but it is difficult to imagine 
that other, more specific numbers were not available. This is bal-
anced out (at least a bit) by the fact 45 percent of the unique titles 
across the lists only shared a call number with one other title or 
with none at all.

This portion of the study was mainly concerned with the compari-
son of titles held versus not held in any given number or range. Out of 
21 groupings of call numbers with more than two unique titles from 
these lists, only about 5 merit comment: those where the number of 
titles “not held” was higher than the “held” might indicate a gap in the 
collection or at least warrant closer scrutiny. Three of these are im-
portant, but relatively easy to explain: those with call numbers that 
don’t begin with “B”. A broad but coherent call number range from 
E184.6 to E185.97 (essentially U.S. history; African Americans, by pe-
riods, topics, region, including biography) had 65 total titles, with 28 
held and 37 not held. Overly broad but still meaningful ranges (for a 



Listen and Learn sessions  141

theological collection) for all titles with call numbers beginning with 
either ML (literature on music) and PS (American literature) fared 
much worse: in ML only 4 of 19 titles were accessible, while PS re-
corded 6 held out of 24. It may not be surprising to find these are the 
deficient areas of a theologically focused collection, but it can still 
be disappointing. Scholars in Black Church Studies are telling us to 
broaden our collections further into history, music, and literature 
to support learning and research.

There were two call number ranges where none of the associ-
ated titles were held. Both are cause for possible concern, one more 
immediate than the other. There were five titles in either BV4526.2 
(Practical religion. The Christian life—Religious duties—Religion 
of the family. The Christian home—General works—1951–2000) or 
BV4526.3 (…2001–). Upon closer inspection, however, it is not imme-
diately apparent that any of these specific titles address their topics 
explicitly from a Black Church perspective, so the concern may be 
whether there are sufficient resources in this area for the collection 
in general. More troubling however, are the six titles listed under 
BV4241.5 (essentially collections of Black sermons). The importance 
of preaching in Black Church life is very well known so this result is 
as confusing as it is concerning and will be a first priority for deeper 
investigation (followed shortly by history, music, and literature in 
support of an interdisciplinary field).

FUTURE RESEARCH

As this study focused on book resources in support of a new aca-
demic program, the next logical step would be to look at the journal 
literature supporting it. Initial attempts to identify the core journal 
literature in Black Church Studies have been inconclusive, at least 
so far. This is a bit trickier problem. While Griffin (2011; 2016)Edu-
cational Leadership and Emerson (2014) detail how citation analysis 
of dissertations and theses in a field can identify what journals are 
actually being used by people working in it, citation analysis does 
have its criticisms, and it remains to be seen if this methodology 
will translate to an interdisciplinary field like Black Church Studies. 
It would be an expansive, detailed project, but may be worth doing 
unless a viable alternative methodology (or a credible list of core 
journals) is found.



142  atLa 2022 ProCeedinGs

REFERENCES

Emerson, Steve. 2014. “Dissertation Citation Analysis as 
Preparation for Supporting a New Doctoral Program in 
Nursing.” Library Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services 
38 (3/4): 47–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649055.2015.1055998.

Gates, Henry Louis Jr. 2021. The Black Church: This Is Our Story, 
This Is Our Song. New York, NY: Penguin Press.

Griffin, Karin L. 2011. “Starting From Ground Zero: Establishing 
a Collection for a New Doctoral Program.” Behavioral & Social 
Sciences Librarian 30 (4): 223–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639
269.2011.622255.

———. 2016. “Citation Analysis for Core Journals in Educational 
Leadership.” Collection Building 35 (1): 12–15. https://doi.
org/10.1108/CB-07-2015-0014.

Wooten, Jamye. n.d. “#BlackChurchSyllabus.” KineticsLive.
Com (blog). Accessed April 26, 2022. http://kineticslive.com/
blackchurchsyllabus/.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14649055.2015.1055998
https://doi.org/10.1080/01639269.2011.622255
https://doi.org/10.1080/01639269.2011.622255
https://doi.org/10.1108/CB-07-2015-0014
https://doi.org/10.1108/CB-07-2015-0014
http://kineticslive.com/blackchurchsyllabus/
http://kineticslive.com/blackchurchsyllabus/

