American Theological Library Association

Hi everyone, this is TR. I am currently in Scottsdale, Arizona at the annual meeting of the American Theological Library Association where I have taken in quite a few conversations about librarianship as it relates to the study of religion and theology. Many librarians are here from seminaries, universities and divinity schools all around the country. Through workshops, presentation and informal conversations I am realizing that theological librarianship can be a very specialized and focused profession. As many of you know I am diving into this profession head first, leaving Union to take a job as reference librarian at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.

That being said, this conference I presented a poster session, as you can see above, on some of my outreach initiatives that I have taken with Union's Theology & Missions department over the last two years. I organized the poster into three main initiatives; faculty interviews, reference & instruction as well as developing resources to meet the needs of the theology department. As you can see on the left of the poster, the Podcast is featured and I noted that we have used the podcast to promote events and faculty publications. In the center of the poster I featured our Research Guides, Research Coach and Classroom Instruction. Finally, on the right side of the poster you will see that I have highlighted some of our digital resource that are useful for theology like our ATLA Religion Database, and Oxford Bibliographies Online. I also displayed some of our recent faculty publications on the right side of the poster session. It was nice to talk about the things that I had a chance to do over the past two years at Union. I will miss working with the theology department at Union and professors like Brad Green, Jim Patterson, Taylor Worley, Ray Van Neste and Mark Dubis. I will also miss working with all of the students.

I want to extend a big thanks to Paul Sorrell for all of his help with the poster and with the podcast among other things. I also want to wish everyone well back at Union.