Catholic Documents 101 A Theological Librarian’s Guide to Identifying, Locating, and Using the Documents of the Catholic Church

Abstract

The teachings of the Catholic Church are found in numerous documents, produced by different persons or groups across centuries, whose arrangement and importance relative to each other are often hard to understand. This Listen and Learn session familiarizes librarians from non-Catholic backgrounds with the various types and features of Catholic Church document, concluding with strategies for answering a sample reference question by relying on that material. By sorting through the classification of these documents and directing attendees to the most authoritative or most easily obtainable source-materials for those documents, this session makes it easier for librarians working in non-Catholic settings to help patrons with research questions concerning Catholic doctrine.