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 Extensive
logistical planning, a call for volunteers, a pallet jack, and
exactly 781 boxes. The last week of March nearly 100 volunteers
aided staff of Lincoln Christian University's Jessie C. Eury Library
in carting, scanning, and packing 30,000 volumes to be shipped to
Taviriski Christian Institute in Ukraine.
Volunteers, many working multiple shifts, carried books from
shelves, sorted books by size for ease of packing, scanned them into
the computer system, and then packed them tightly into boxes.
Labels listing every book in each box were printed
and taped to the outside of the corresponding box for customs
inspection. Boxes were then stacked onto pallets six layers high and
wrapped tightly in plastic to await transfer into a shipping
container.
After three days of packing, the 781st and final box
was taped shut, and loaded pallets lined the wall from one end of
LCU’s Administration Building to the other.
The pallets were then loaded into a shipping
container brought to campus at the end of the week.
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As the loading neared its
completion, a short prayer service was held at the shipping
container.
Current and former faculty and staff, alumni, church youth
groups, families with children on spring break, and other
volunteers from area churches came to the LCU campus to help
with all stages of the packing process.
Tavriski Christian Institute
The books are being shipped to Tavriski Christian Institute
(TCI), originally located in Kherson, Ukraine, but currently
operating from rented facilities in the eastern city of
Ivano-Frankivsk after evacuating at the Russian invasion of
Ukraine in February of 2022. When the Russian army invaded,
Russian soldiers occupied TCI’s Kherson campus. According to a
representative from TCI who came to Lincoln from Ukraine to
assist with the transfer, Russian soldiers dragged the TCI
library's books outside and threw them into piles, burned them,
and then drove over the piles with bulldozers.
TCI, founded in 1997, has been engaged in
humanitarian work from the beginning of the war and plans to
relocate to a new campus in Kyiv when funding allows. TCI is the
only State-licensed Bible College in Ukraine and is in the process
of becoming the first and only State-licensed Christian University
in Ukraine. The donation from LCU will make up the majority of what
is needed to not only rebuild their library, but to also meet the
Ukrainian requirements for TCI to be recognized as the first
Ukrainian Christian University.
Facilitating the transfer of books at LCU were representatives from
Theological Books Network (TBN) based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
This organization works to connect books that need a new home with
organizations that need books. The TBN website explains that the
centers of Christianity are and have shifted from the historically
Christian northern hemisphere to the “Global South,” however many of
these areas lack affordable resources for theological university
programs, pastoral training, and biblical scholarship. To address
this issue, TBN collects books from publishers, seminaries,
scholars, churches, and other non-profits and ships them to areas of
known need, as well as providing digital resources and supporting
indigenous scholarship.
LCU Director of Library Services Leslie Starasta knew of TBN
previously and had toured their warehouse in Grand Rapids several
years ago. She stated, “I’m so excited our books are able to train
Kingdom leaders in a place that’s under-resourced. They are going to
make a difference.”
The LCU Library
The 80-year history of Lincoln Christian University’s Jessie C. Eury
Library began with a donation of 500 books at the college's founding
in 1944 and grew to over 100,000 books, journals, recordings, and
special collections. Many of these library resources have been or
are in process of being relocated to other schools, in addition to
TCI.
Several thousand volumes have gone to Ozark Christian College
(Joplin, Missouri), which will be taking over some of Lincoln
Christian Seminary’s programming in the fall of 2024. The Enos E.
Dowling Rare Book Collection will be relocated to Abilene Christian
University’s Special Collections and Archives (Abilene, Texas). The
Dowling Collection, named for professor and founding dean of Lincoln
Christian Seminary, contains over 1,000 rare books and journals of
the Stone-Campbell Movement, and Dowling’s personal collection of
Stone-Campbell hymnals. Archives such as LCU yearbooks, catalogs,
and commencement programs will also be transferred to Ozark
Christian College and Abilene Christian University. Digitized
recordings of LCU chapel sermons, conferences, and seminars will be
hosted by Ozark Christian College where they will remain available
to the public. Theses and Doctor of Ministry projects completed by
Lincoln Christian Seminary graduates will continue to be
available for interlibrary loan after transfer to Ozark Christian
College and Johnson University (Knoxville, Tennessee).
Reflections on a Library
Anyone who attended college on a small campus knows that a
university library is more than just a collection of books and
journals. It's a quiet place to finish homework and a meeting space
for group projects. It’s coveted student worker employment. It's
study dates that lead to real dates. It’s help with a procrastinated
research project. It’s “study breaks” that might be code for kissing
your sweetie in the deserted stacks of the top floor.
It’s a college student worker who is surprised after turning off the
lights for the night by a new Seminary student staggering down the
stairs in the dark because he didn’t know the library was closing.
It’s the same befuddled Seminary student who turns out to not mind
staggering down library stairs in the dark so much because now he
has an “in” to talk to the student worker at the front desk, who
happens to be the prettiest girl on campus. It’s the meet-cute that
leads to a courtship between the library student worker and the new
Seminary student and ultimately to their wedding three years later.
It’s the years later when the couple, now with a daughter and a son,
return so that the former Seminary student can become the Seminary
professor. It’s their children who grow up to study in the same
library while attending the same college as the parents, and the
daughter also returning to teach and assigning library research
projects to a new generation of students. It’s thinking about legacy
and beginnings and endings and grief as a grown-up daughter packs
boxes of library books to send to Ukraine in the room where her
parents met and then sits down to write the library’s eulogy to
submit to Lincoln Daily News.
Lincoln Christian University will host its final commencement
ceremony on May 4 at 10:00 a.m. at the former Earl C. Hargrove
Chapel. LCU will close permanently on May 31, 2024.
[Stephanie Hall] |
