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331

Shrinking into our Space
Reducing the Physical and Budgetary 
Footprint of the Library While Increasing 
Access
Beth Kumar, Director of Library Services, Graduate Theological Union

ABSTR ACT: The Graduate Theological Union (GTU) Library in Berkeley, 
California, has implemented significant changes to reduce its physical 
and budgetary footprint while enhancing access to resources. Serving 
a diverse consortium of theological schools, the library has consoli-
dated its collections, digitized materials, and expanded digital services. 
By reducing its physical space and increasing reliance on electronic 
resources and shared print programs, the library has supported the 
GTU’s financial goals and improved service to distant students and 
faculty. The collaboration with the Internet Archive has been pivotal 
in preserving rare materials. Despite budget cuts and staff reductions, 
the library remains a critical resource hub, leveraging technology and 
partnerships to maintain comprehensive access to theological content 
and exploring new affiliations to extend its reach.

INTRODUCTION

The Graduate Theological Union (GTU) Library is a consortial library 
located in Berkeley, California, serving the students of the Graduate 
Theological Union. Formed in 1962, the GTU currently consists of nine 
separately accredited theological schools from Catholic, Protestant, 
and Buddhist traditions, five academic centers, seven affiliates, and 
non-degree certificate programs, such as the Interfaith Chaplaincy 
Program. The degree programs are at the graduate level and include 
DMin, MDiv, MA, MTS, ecclesiastical degrees, and the PhD program, 
with the library serving as the connecting hub of all students.

The GTU Library has changed its patron services, physical spaces, 
and collections as part of the campus five-year plan to close the 
budget gap and realign services to better serve students and faculty 
at a distance. Specifically, GTU’s idea was to bring employees and 



332    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

classrooms together by reducing library space by half (a reduction 
of 15,742 sq ft), which allowed all campus departments to move into 
the building. This change allowed for the other campus buildings to 
earn significant rental income.

COLLECTION CHANGES

This plan called for the physical space of the library’s collections 
to be reduced, while significantly expanding online services and 
collections. The first floor of the building became the sole space 
for library research collections and patron services, including the 
staffed service desks and the rare book and archives reading room.

The transition involved:

1) Collection consolidation
2) Expanded cooperation with other research libraries
3) Growth of electronic resources

The initial goals for collection consolidation included:

• Moving all library staff and collections off the sec-
ond floor

• Reducing the circulating collection footprint by 30% 
(approximately 7,000-10,000 linear feet)

• Avoiding new off-site storage costs for the long-term
• Providing access to digital and print research con-

tent held elsewhere

Librarians investigated and implemented various tactics com-
monly used by research libraries to address the decrease in the 
print collections:

Digitization and Controlled Digital Lending
Partnering with Internet Archive, print collections, mostly duplicates, 
were donated for non-destructive scanning. People can discover the 
link to the scanned item through the library website and view it on 
archive.org. As of summer 2024, over 20,000 GTU items have been 
digitized and are available on archive.org, with scanning ongoing.

http://archive.org
http://archive.org


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Participation in Shared Print Programs: 
By participating in the Statewide California Electronic Library 
Consortium (SCELC) shared print program, the library agrees to 
keep specific book titles for 15 to 25 years. These titles are scarce 
in California, with some being unique to the United States. Student 
employees have labeled the spines of these books for visibility and 
promotion, and the catalog records reflect GTU’s long-term commit-
ment to keeping these items on the shelves. 

For journal collections, the Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST) 
program verifies and consolidates volumes in compact storage 
systems, providing complete access for partner libraries. GTU par-
ticipated in a gap-fill program with other WEST libraries to donate 
volumes to complete runs of titles. Interlibrary Loan (ILL) allows 
for the access and exchange of materials among partner libraries. 

Purchasing eBooks and eJournal bundles
The collection development policy was revised to favor purchase 
of ebooks over print books. Print books would only be bought if 
electronic copies were unavailable. Print journals were switched to 
electronic journal bundles to eliminate print journal subscriptions 
wherever possible. For example, we subscribed to five print journals 
with the publisher Equinox. By canceling the print and subscribing 
to the online-only bundle, we now have access to seventeen journals 
in religion at a lower price. Similar decisions were made with larger 
bundles as well, such as a 750-title Project Muse package. In addi-
tion to the benefit of all distance students having instant access to 
these titles, the library saves on the costs of binding, postage, and 
staff time spent on bindery shipments.  

PHYSICAL SHIFTS

The plan involved several overlapping phases, and the presentation 
consisted of photos of these physical changes in the library building 
from 2022 to 2024.



334    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

1. Donation and removal for digitization.
Items were quickly processed and boxed by a team of six student 
employees. Rare books were taken off-site temporarily for safekeep-
ing and returned at the end of the project. Microforms, monographs, 
reference materials, and some periodicals were donated to the 
Internet Archive for digitization and controlled digital lending. In 
all, roughly 60,000 of the 700,000+ items were donated in the first 
round, the majority being duplicate copies. Hundreds of thousands 
of items remained in four off-site storage locations during this phase, 
as the primary focus was on the main library building, although one 
off-site storage location of duplicate circulating material did have 
collections donated.

2. Large-scale shift and signage. 
A professional moving company shifted the 400,000-plus items in 
the main library circulating collections into the reconfigured first-
floor shelves while the library remained open for patrons. New 
signs helped people locate the reorganized collections and library 
services. After the books were relocated, the first floor closed for the 
construction of library staff offices, while the second floor remained 
open for patrons and staff. 

3. Analysis of collections for shared print programs, digitization, and 
online acquisitions. 
GTU Librarians continued to use Greenglass to compare collections 
against other peer libraries, digital holdings, and commercially 
available ebook and ejournal collections. They made decisions 
about where to deselect and relocate print holdings permanently, 
when to purchase e-resources to replace print, and when to rely 
on holdings of other libraries. After four months, the first floor 
reopened in January 2023, and the library staff moved downstairs. 
Ten thousand rare materials, held off-site temporarily for their 
protection, returned to the building. The second floor closed for the 
construction of classrooms and non-library staff offices, followed by 
the relocation of employees including faculty, which was completed 
by Fall Semester 2023. 



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4. Enable online access and adjust collection development policies. 
Librarians began to reconnect digitized copies or purchased copies 
into the catalog as they became available. Shared print and shared 
digital program agreements were negotiated and begun in discovery, 
access, and collection management workflows. Librarians and the 
faculty library committee revised the collection development policy 
to steer the development of the collections in the future in terms 
of subjects, formats, numbers of copies, and reliance on library 
partners. Librarians continued to analyze collections to reduce the 
physical collection and make space for new books. 

BUDGET REDUCTION

As part of the five-year strategic plan, the GTU was required to 
reduce the annual budget by 20% to create financial equilibrium. 
However, as the GTU library is a consortial library, the library budget 
is separated from the general campus budget. The library budget is 
divided among nine schools offering a variety of accredited graduate-
level theology degrees, each paying based on a formula consisting 
of their programs’ rolling four-year average of credits. As such, the 
GTU’s contribution is the highest, and is roughly 25% of the $2.3 
million budget. The eight member schools pay proportionally for 
equal services. 

On the expense side, about half of the budget is spent on staffing 
and benefits. Another large percentage covers building expenses, 
maintenance services, IT support, HR, and business office functions. 
Roughly $400,000 is spent on library collections and software, and 
less than $10,000 remains for library hardware, office supplies, 
professional development, and events. 

The library has been tasked with keeping a flat budget for the 
past four years, with expected reductions in the future. As electronic 
resources expenditure increases by 5–10% annually, the staff and 
collections have felt the impact of reductions. This equilibrium has 
been accomplished in collections with bundling as described above, 
cuts in the standing order collections, and journal-title cancellations. 
These were achieved by working directly with faculty and targeting 
areas that are no longer part of the curriculum and do not have active 
faculty doing research. Staffing cuts were more challenging, as the 



336    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

staff is already smaller than in libraries of similar collection size. The 
presentation discussed how the regular staff once numbered more 
than forty; today, there are only ten. Over the last four years, positions 
have been eliminated, some through vacancies and retirements, but 
not all. The eliminated positions are Serials Assistant, Conservator, 
Circulation Assistant, Head of Circulation, Branch Librarian, and 
Assistant to the Library Director. Of the remaining positions, some 
have been combined, some have reduced hours, and others have 
eliminated functions. In addition to the ten regular staff members, 
there are roughly ten to twelve part-time student employees at any 
time. Although not on the library’s payroll, the evening and weekend 
security guard position has been eliminated, and the library reduced 
its hours to daytime, weekdays only. 

FUTURE PLANS

Going forward, with a smaller staff, a smaller space, and a reduced 
budget, we will be in continual evaluation mode to ensure that 
students and faculty continue to have comprehensive access to 
theological resources. We have worked to expand offerings through 
partnerships and purchases and linking and highlighting open-access 
resources. We have been looking at technology to help us be more 
efficient and have trusted our long-term student employees with 
tasks previously managed by regular staff. One benefit of being a 
graduate-only institution is that student employees often stay for 
five years or more, and we can train and grow their library skills to 
manage more complex tasks, such as copy cataloging, serials, signage 
and map creation, and supervising the branch library.  

We do have one large bright spot in expanding our access: our 
strong relationship with the Internet Archive. In addition to con-
tinuing to donate materials to them, we have some collections of 
interest to researchers that are held in our rare book collection. 
Previously, someone would need to travel to Berkeley to view these 
in our library. We experimented with bringing items to Internet 
Archive’s offices, but many items were too fragile for the short car 
ride to their headquarters. Instead, the Internet Archive has set up 
a digitization center in the GTU library, which can be used to scan 
materials we own, such as rare books and unique shared print 
items. The Internet Archive staff operate the machines, while GTU 



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librarians identify the priority of materials. The equipment has been 
set up as of July 2024, and the operators are being trained. The first 
two collections we want to digitize include an Islamic Manuscript 
Collection comprising 110 texts from the early sixteenth century to 
the mid-nineteenth century. These have finding aids, but the full 
text is not available online. The other collection high on our prior-
ity list is 240 separate editions of the Book of Common Prayer. This 
collection includes editions not adopted by the church and is of 
great interest to researchers. GTU librarians have been fundraising 
to support the staffing of the digitization center and are optimistic 
that the first scans will be available in Fall 2024. 

The GTU Library is also investigating expanding the patron base, 
as our own enrollment shrinks. As some libraries have patron 
categories for independent researchers to associate or for other 
seminaries to affiliate with the library, we haven’t offered an easy 
path for access in the past other than a visiting scholar program, 
which required individuals to be physically present in Berkeley for 
a time. Unaffiliated scholars have long inquired about using library 
resources remotely, but we did not offer options for remote asso-
ciations. We have succeeded with our first out-of-state affiliate, the 
Wilmette Institute, a Bahá’í institution located near Chicago. GTU 
librarians load Wilmette patrons into our library system, offer online 
orientation and instruction sessions, and support students and fac-
ulty using chat, Zoom, and phone services. We provide interlibrary 
loan services and on-demand scanning, as we do for all students at 
a distance. We believe we could support other small schools in this 
way. Still, we are investigating the workload on our librarians and 
finding schools and partners who would mutually benefit from the 
collections we have. 

CONCLUSION

The transformation of the Graduate Theological Library is an exam-
ple of how strategic changes can enhance access while addressing 
financial constraints. By reducing its physical footprint and expand-
ing digital services, the library has successfully aligned with the 
campus’s five-year plan to close budget gaps and realign services. 
The innovative use of digitization and shared print programs has 
allowed the library to maintain its status as a research hub while 



338    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

optimizing space and resources. Despite budget cuts and staff reduc-
tions, the library has continued to provide comprehensive access 
to theological resources through partnerships and technology. The 
goal of ensuring sustained support for the diverse GTU community 
remains in our minds as we explore the next chapter in our library.


