PROJECT: “LIBRARY PERSONNEL”

Introduction to the Library’s Situation:

Library Personnel:
For the service of the students, the library has a sister working full-time. In order to continue with the daily ten hours of service, the library receives the support of students with scholarships awarded by the seminary. These helpers make an effort to keep everything in order and “to attend”/”to serve” the students.
We also have a library “director”, “headmaster”. She supervises, solves problems and helps with the daily work.

Library Hours:
The Lima Evangelical Seminary holds its undergraduate program during the day and offers diploma programs in the evenings. Therefore, the library must provide its services from 9:00am to 9:30 pm to guarantee that students of both programs receive the same possibilities of using it. On top of providing a nightly service, the library opens on Saturday mornings; thus, providing a possibility for every believer in Lima to find time to prepare themselves for the ministry in their churches.

Library Resources:
The library contains over 6000 volumes in the Spanish section. All these books are registered in the computerized system. In addition to these resources, the library has holds over 600 books in the storage room waiting to be integrated into the bookshelves. Those books are either brand new or donations and are not ready to be used yet. At the same time, in that storage there is a vast amount of resources that has been collected over the years, such as professors’ handouts, selected material from different courses and bulletins; all these containing valuable information for theological studies. 
The Library has been recently modified and a room was inaugurated for all kinds of materials belonging to a “Hemerotec”. In there, both Spanish and English magazines can be found alongside with cassettes, PowerPoint’s, maps and other material such as student’s thesis and essays.

Library’s Objectives:
With all that has previously shown, the library could provide a vast variety of resources for theological studies. Sadly, a large portion of this material is not organized nor registered in any form and it is not updated to meet the needs of this new century. The Library’s goal consists in offering a material easily achievable for theological studies. This is not just for Seminary students but for the alumni and the entire evangelical community. It is a desire of the Seminary for visiting readers to come and study at the seminary.

Need:
A big step towards the desired objective would be to have more personnel in different areas of the Library.

1. Service in the full Library’s Schedule (morning, afternoon and night shifts)
Due to a lack of knowledge on behalf of the students, the Library presented certain irregularities that damaged its image. The students are overburdened by the Library’s work.
The lady who has worked for decades at the Library is doing a great effort keeping it running, but in her 8 hours shift cannot finish the expected work. She is very busy with the service and processing new spanish books into the system. For the Library to provide an adequate full-time service is of great need to have an additional person, who can work at night, substituting the students.

2. Processing the English books to the computerized system
With an approximate of 4000 books, a person would be occupied 200 laboring days processing 20 books a day. Having trained personnel at the Library would mean that all the English material could be included in the system. There are more students every year that can read in English and many good theological books are not translated. Furthermore, the Graduate program also requires the use of books in English.

All these needs cannot be fulfilled by one person. The current person in charge has enough work as it just by keeping up with the regular functioning of the Library, that is, giving a service to the students and professors and processing the most important newest books for the current courses and more.

Due to these reasons, the project for a nightly and Saturday shift has been elaborated:

Monday through Friday from 6:00pm to 9:15pm and Saturdays from 9:00am to 12:30pm during the months of March through June and August through December (5 days 3 ¼ hours and 1 day 3 ½ hours per week).

The Seminary and the Library are thankful for your support.