Orthodox Christian parishes need robust libraries to meet the needs of their parishioners. Many parishes have small libraries established and maintained by volunteers not trained in librarianship. Most of these are often started by asking members to donate books to the library, which very often is a bookshelf in the fellowship hall. These are not cataloged or organized in any standard way.
The best Orthodox Christian libraries are provided by our seminaries. However, these libraries are restricted to the students, faculty, and staff of the seminary and are too far away for parishioners to access them.
The goals of the Orthodox Christian Library System are:
- Provide an Integrated Library System (ILS) for each member library with union catalog capabilities to allow borrowers to see what is available at other member libraries
- Support library staff and collection development activities
- Act as a clearing house for parish librarians and their teams, providing resources, and programs that they can use and implement locally