Shumaker Library at Central Seminary
Library Collection Access
Shumaker Library at Central’s main campus in Shawnee, KS is available for patron use Monday through Thursday from 10:00am until 4:00pm (excluding holidays or special events on campus).The Digital Theological Library is open 24-hours a day, 7 days per week.
Central Seminary Library Catalog and Resources
Digital Theological Library 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 (18 schools at present) who pool their financial resources to obtain access to digital resources that would be too costly to license independently. Indeed, the stated mission of the DTL is “to provide its co-owning institutions with the highest quality digital resources in religious and theological studies at the lowest possible costs.”
The principal value of the DTL for Central is the opportunity to participate in a library context of a much larger scale. For instance, the inclusion of DTL resources as part of Central’s collections more than tripled the digital holdings of the Shumaker Library. DTL holdings as of this writing are as follows: over 600,000 ebooks; over 37,000 journal and magazine titles with more than 66,000,000 articles and reviews; over 80,000 music recordings; and over 60,000 videos. This represents a value of over $1,000,000 USD in permanent access to ebooks alone. Another benefit of participating in a collective of a larger scale is the dedicated DTL staff focused on developing and sustaining the digital collections.
Another major driver motivating Central to become a member institution was the availability of Korean language resources to support our Korean programs. Korean-speaking students at Central now have access to databases hosted by the National Library of Korean, for ebooks and for articles, with a sizable volume of resources in their first language.
Current Central students, staff, and faculty are able to access resources in the DTL from remote locations using their CBTS account. Those who are not members of the Central community are able to access these online resources by visiting the Shumaker library on the Central Seminary campus in Shawnee, where library staff will help them log on to the system.
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.”