This past Sunday was the culmination of another incredibly busy week at St. James. I thought things were supposed to slow down in the summer! We had at least six visitors at the early service–hardy souls! Among them were a couple from Kansas. They were in town for a church and synagogue librarian conference. That in itself raises all sorts of interesting questions.

After the service, they made sure to meet me. She was carrying a book in her hand. They introduced themselves, saying they were from Lawrence, KS (home of the University of Kansas). The book she gave to me was one that had found itself into their church’s library, but had a bookplate identifying it as property of St. James, Greenville.

It wasn’t very old, having been printed in 2000, but I am very curious how it got from here to there. Any ideas?

By the way, I’ve been wondering about the usefulness of church libraries. Ours at St. James seems to be used primarily as a meeting room. Few of the books circulate and most of them are decades old. I remember when I was a child reading many of the books in our church library. There were lots for young readers, but they were carefully censored. Even the Laura Ingalls Wilder books had all the dirty words like “gee” and “gosh” carefully blacked out.