New to This Group?

If you are new to this group, introduce yourself. Perhaps tell us something about your library, how long you've been involved, something about your hopes, dreams and wishes for your library.

Hi there,
Yes, brand new to the group. I'm the current librarian at Tunbridge Wells Meeting in Kent, UK. It's a smallish meeting with anywhere from 10 to 30 people attending on a Sunday. My wife is the caretaker here and we've lived in the meeting house for the past three-plus years. She was brought up a Quaker and I'm a regular attender.
Our library is rather small and I think the books have been well-chosen over time, however I would like to see borrowing increase. Hopefully this can be done by purchasing some new titles, which hasn't happened over the past few years. I started only a couple months ago and putting the catalogue onto LT was a useful start as it familiarised me with the library and allowed a bit of archiving in the process. Any tips/ideas for making our library a better-used resource for our members and attenders will be gratefully received!
Yours in Friendship,
Troy

Everyone is looking for those good ideas to improve use, Troy. I think I'll start another thread for that.

I've just joined this group - not because I am responsible for a monthly or yearly meeting library, but because all the libraries tagged as most similar to mine are meeting libraries - hope that is an acceptable basis for membership! I'm in the process of moving, and have seized the opportunity to recatalog my books using LibraryThing. Hello out there!

llw

I am a Muslim married to a Quaker, and I attend the meeting in Birmingham, Alabama. Our home library has a number of Quaker titles, so like LloydLeeWilson I end up with a number of "similar libraries" from meetings around the world.

Our meeting has an aging library that could stand to be cataloged, and I have toyed with proposing that the meeting OK a LibraryThing catalog. We have no designated meeting librarian.

QuakerReviews is my catalog with reviews and ratings of the pamphlets and books I have read about Quakerism or of interest to Friends. I have started with the Pendle Hill Pamphlets, since there are so many excellent ones, and they are pretty widely available in Friends' libraries, or from Pendle Hill itself. I will keep adding them, and other Quaker books, as I read them. I currently have read over 300 Pendle Hill Pamphlets, and can recommend many -- see the ratings and reviews. The Quaker Reviews catalog can be sorted by ratings, in case you want to see all the PHPs that get 5 star ratings, for example.
I am a Friend from Middlebury Friends Meeting, in Vermont, USA, and I also sojourn frequently in Canberra Regional Meeting in Australia. This participation in two meetings has been very rich for me, and my husband and I have brought several meeting practices from one to the other, in both directions.

This is an excellent thing you are doing! I have begun entering our collection of PHPs and am just getting close to the 200s. I do have a couple more recent ones entered and saw your review of them. This will be helpful and interesting to our readers. I keep finding more and more things I like about LibraryThing and being in a group like this is one of them.

Claudia Hanson

Bevianne from Victoria Regional Meeting Library (Australia) here. Tomorrow our co-clerks sign the contract to take possession of our new Friends home. And, joy of joys, we get to move the library again!

Anyhow, the moves give us an excuse to comb through everything and set up new processes, practices and policies.

We're very much looking forward to everything - and our relationship with everyone in this group.

Blessings from Bevianne for the committee

Thanks for sharing--I have been curious about doing a similar project, but glad someone is already working reviews for the contemporary reader. I look forward to perusing your reviews.

Cybil from San Jose Friends Meeting

Hi all,

I am from San Jose Friends Meeting in California. We recently started using Library Thing about two years ago. We are a small meeting of about 30 members with a collection of about 600 books with no room to grow much more than that since we currently do not have a dedicated library room.

I would also be interested in a thread about ways to increase use. I am kind of interested whether more people are buying e-books on Quaker topics, or whether people are still faithfully reading religious books in paper? Also, I am curious what your communities have said in regards to your library, like what they wish the library was like or whether they like it the way it is? Also, have you thought about collaborating with other committees to see what information needs they may have? Whether the library can help out with the Discussion Committee?

Also, I am curious about how Quaker Libraries have approached weeding of their collections? I know this is a controversial subject, especially since the collection reflects the community's taste over the years. But, I really worry that our collection is more historic than living. Plus we have a few older books that probably would be best kept in an archive rather than our library.

Really looking forward to this discussion thread.

-Cybil

Dear Cybil,
Increasing library use is every librarians struggle. Some take a few books into the potluck room, or lay out a few on a table in the hallway, or send out group emails promoting some the books. Our members who buy their own books do so because they want to underline and mark them up. I have not heard of an interest in ebooks on Quaker subjects yet. No one says much about the library. A few dearly love it. We have no budget to purchase books so our additions are donated; we were given 54 adult and children's books in 2015. We are a small Meeting with 30 members and attenders. Re: weeding; I keep all the books that are regarding Quakers. I may give away duplicates. We have some really old books that were a gift that I keep on the shelf in special nonacid boxes with lift up lids; they can't be checked out. I cherish the books on Quaker history, I think they are important for guiding our contemporary changes. They are not easy for people to find to buy. I'm not sure about what you mean regarding collaborating with other committees. I help people find books they are looking for---that's when LibraryThing comes in handy with the Tags I can use for each book.
My philosophical attitude is even though not many may use the library, it is ready to be used when needed.

Best of luck,

Claudia Hanson
Chico, CA

Not a Quaker, but regarding the older rarer books and eBooks: I have been very impressed by the number of books (and ever increasing) the Mormons have on Gutenberg. It looks as though they have been making a concerted effort to get their old materials up and available. I wish groups I was more interested in would also do this.

Hi, there are 3 of us on the Milton Keynes Meeting House library committee, and we are just starting the project of putting our library catalogue on here. Main aim is so that members and attenders can see what books we have by going online at home, and by using their mobile devices at the Meeting House. We are feeling a little daunted at the size of the project but are hoping for the best. Our library is well used , but it can be tricky finding the book you want. Hoping this will help.

>13 MKQuakerlibrary: Hi there. About finding books you want in LT: I've found the more tags you can add - ones that are meaningful like Peace Testimony, John Woolman, elders, Quaker history - the more effective LT is for searching. It seems to search all available fields, so words in titles, authors, numbers all get searched as well as tags. If your shelves are in order with call numbers from the books, you can find the one you're looking for.

Also, creating collections for groups of books you might shelve together - like Swarthmore Lectures; like children's books; like historical properties books and pamphlets; like non-circulating books - has been very useful for us.

I just created a LT account for Honolulu Friends Meeting, in anticipation of TinyCat (accepted for beta testing!). Our library collection is housed throughout the Meetinghouse in various locations (mostly in the hall, which is often dark), and was listed using EndNote, which had problems of access, among other things. I discovered that the EndNote listing did not reflect our true holdings (duplicate ANs, books on shelf, not listed), for instance. Web-based will, I hope, increase our use.

>15 HFMLibrary: Hi there!

Good to see you here. Happy cataloguing. :-)

I am the current clerk of the Charlottesville Friends Meeting (Virginia, USA) library committee. Although I'm somewhat new to using LibraryThing, our committee has been using it for several years. We have a small collection, cared for by three committee members.

Some feel that our library is underutilized, and we would like to remedy that situation. We are currently considering ways to connect our collection to events such as visiting speakers or topics of discussion presented by our Program committee -- for example, by simply getting the relevant book off the shelf and placing it on our "new book" display rack.

Libby

Hello, I joined today having just persuaded my small Local Meetng in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, to appoint me as their librarian. We meet in rented premises and a few years ago bought a "Charlton book trolley" so that our "library" can be wheeled out of a walk-in store on Sunday mornings. This means we only have two shelves about 1 metre long for all our books!
I am going to start off by cataloging what we've got using LibraryThing, but what really interests me is to see how other small Meetings with limited storage decide what books to keep. Is there somewhere a list of "must-haves" or classics that every Quaker library needs? What books are borrowed most?

Yours enthusiastically!
Sally

P.S. If I start off a catalogue in my own name, will I then be able to export it to an organisation site if and when I decide to join my Meeting up as a member? (I gather this will attract a fee?) Or should I join the Meeting up first?
P.P.S. Also where do I find out how to export the list of books to Word so that we can have a printed copy?

Hi. I see the group is considered dormant but maybe someone is reading. I've recently joined my Quaker meeting (Mount Toby, Leverett, Massachusetts, USA) Library Committee and feel pretty overwhelmed. We have thousands of books, and most of the committee members are also new and not professional librarians. We also had a nearly complete turnover of committee members during covid. I'm looking for resources for amateur Quaker librarians to get up to speed on what my responsibilities are.