Welcome to the Library!

I've wanted to help with the church library for a long time. I love reading, and it seemed like the perfect place to work.

About a year-and-a-half-ago, our old church librarian needed help with some things before our church construction began, so I started going in about once a week to help her and a few other ladies with figuring out our inventory.

Fast forward to this fall when the church started to need to make plans for our new library (for the year our church was in construction, we simply packed all our books away in storage, and didn't have a library). Our old librarian "retired" from her position, and I was excited to be asked to be the assistant to the head of the new library!

Immediately, we ordered a computer program so that we could have our books and resources listed and checked out electronically. Members of the library committee (who were all awesome, and included my aunt, mother-in-law, and my dad as our official tech guy, along with a few others) then had to take boxes of the books home, put a bar code sticker on each one, file the book's information on the program, type in the matching barcode, and then export it to our church's database. (This sounds incredibly boring. haha) It was a lot of work, and I think I built some muscles carrying so many boxes of books this spring! But I enjoyed it, although I wanted to stop every time I saw a book that looked interesting to read it :-P

Our next step was to set up the new, beautiful library. I think the library is the most beautiful room in our new building. We have high ceilings, a gorgeous light fixture made out of remnants from the stained glass window in our old sanctuary, and three, amazing, floor-to-ceiling windows.

On our committee, we had someone appointed to be the decorator, and she did such a beautiful job! I am so excited, and seriously could spend all my free time in there because it has such a beautiful, peaceful feel now.

Last Sunday was our library's grand opening! I am so excited that we have the library up and running again! We have plans to purchase a lot more nonfiction books and resources (and some fiction too), and I can't wait to watch our collection grow with books that will strengthen people in their walks with God.That is the main purpose of the library, after all.

Enough rambling...nobody but me probably cares about all that :-P But anyway, here is a tour of our new, beautiful library (keep in mind that with the huge windows taking over one whole wall, it's almost impossible to get a good picture in there with that lighting)

The stained-glass windows on the wall in the picture above are also from our old sanctuary

Kathy, our decorator, set up these cute, little endcaps to display new releases or other books of note.

This is our main desk check-out station. To check a book out, patrons just type in their name, and scan the barcode sticker on the inside cover.

This is the back wall of the room, where a second check out station is found. There's a sink there in case we want to have coffee or something for the patrons, and also a little basket to drop off book donations (we already have boxes and boxes to go through...people donate a LOT of books to a church library!)

These are our two main bookcases with a table in the middle. The closest bookcase is only halfway filled, because we actually have about 15 boxes of books left to enter, but we ran out of bar code labels. So that is our project for this week.

That's pretty much it! I'm so excited for the future of our church library. My prayer is that many lives are touched, walks with the Lord are strengthened, and hearts are changed through the pages in this room.