WorldCat Collection Analysis, John Calvin, and ATLA

I'm back from a few days in Ottawa at the ATLA (American Theological Library Association) Annual Meeting. Ottawa is a great city, with good public transportation and a tremendous network of bike paths along rivers and canals and throughout the city. I rented a bike and managed to ride about 80 miles during the four days I was there.

This has little to do with theological reference, but my presentation (with Terry Robertson from Andrews University) was an introduction to and analysis of WorldCat Collection Analysis, a tool designed to help librarians evaluate library collections. I'm posting a link to my PowerPoint (creatively entitled WorldCat Collection Analysis) for the benefit of those who attended the session and may have dozed off during the presentation.

While we're distributing our PowerPoint Presentations, a couple of years ago my colleague Paul Fields and I gave a presentation at the same conference with the engaging title: Bibliographic Resources for the Study of John Calvin. More interesting presentation, I thought, but not nearly as well-attended as the WorldCat Collection Analysis session this year.

Congratulations to the Meeter Center for Calvin Studies

The H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies, located in Hekman Library, is celebrating its 25th anniversary. The center began with a collection of important books and a bibliography by Calvin College professor Dr. H. Henry Meeter during his tenure of teaching in the Bible (now Religion) Department from 1927 to 1957. At the initiative of DR. Meeter, Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary established the Committee for Scholarly Research and Development of Basic Historic Calvinism in 1961. This committee was the genesis of the H. Henry Meeter Center and its governing board.

Today the Meeter Center with its rare items, books, articles, literature, and bibliographies is acclaimed worldwide as one of the most extensive and user-friendly of all Calvin and Calvinism collections.

The center recently purchased a copy Calvin's "Congrégation sur l’élection éternelle de Dieu."

The book was printed in Geneva in 1562 by Vincent Bres and only five libraries in Europe are known to own it and none in the United States.

It measures just three inches by 4¾ inches in size, slightly bigger than a deck of cards, but what is contained in its 118 pages presents Calvin’s teaching on election, particularly the issue of universal salvation against particular election (Calvin came down on the side of particular election).

A local television station recently featured this acquisition. Here's a link to their video feature.