Shumaker Library at Central Seminary
Library Collection Access
Shumaker Library at Central Seminary includes the following online resources, available online 24-hours a day, 7 days per week. A wealth of books, articles, videos, and curated web resources are available through the Digital Theological Library, along with Chat service. Please ask whenever you need assistance!
Central Seminary Library Resources
Digital Theological Library Access
Alumni Access
The Seminary Bookshelf contains hundreds of thousands of the key resources including books, articles, videos, and curated web resources from the Digital Theological Library. This digital collection is available to religious professionals (e.g., pastors, chaplains, counselors) who meet two criteria: (1) they reside in North America and (2) they are not currently enrolled in, or working at, any higher education institution.
Central alumni can have either 3 months of free access to the Seminary Bookshelf or a 25% discount off the $10/monthly membership fee for their first year of ongoing access. Contact Carolyn Johnson, library director, at cjohnson@cbts.edu for discount codes and access.
About the Digital Theological Library (DTL)
Shumaker Library at Central Seminary is a member of the Digital Theological Library (DTL).
DTL is “a co-owned, born-digital library of religious and theological studies.” In other words, it is an organization that was formed and is sustained by member institutions who pool their financial resources to obtain access to digital resources that would be too costly to license independently.
As of March 2025, DTL contains 1.3 million Ebooks, 116 million articles, 103,000 journals, 80,000+ music recordings; and 60,000+ videos.
In addition to digitized Korean language E-Reserve books, Korean-speaking students at Central have access to databases hosted by the National Library of Korean that include ebooks and articles.
Current Central students, staff, and faculty can access resources in the DTL from remote locations using their Central Seminary account.
About Shumaker Library
Shumaker Library is named for Ms. Dianne Shumaker, who gave the lead gift for the renovation and expressed her delight in having the library so named. “Philosophically,” said Shumaker, “my relationship with Central Seminary is ‘what God wants.’ I feel blessed to be a contributor to this greater good. Being part of the library is a special joy – I love books and have an extensive library of my own.”