Roman Catholic

David Kriegh, Saint Mary’s College of California, Convener

Kathy Harty, Sacred Heart Seminary & School of Theology, Secretary

Members Present

  • Jessica Boyer, Mount St. Mary’s University (Emmitsburg)
  • Clay-Edward Dixon, Graduate Theological Union
  • Stephanie Garrett, Catholic International University
  • Kathy Harty, Sacred Heart Seminary and School of Theology
  • Barnaby Hughes, Atla
  • Br. Andrew Kosmowski, SM, North American Center for Marianist Studies
  • David Kriegh, Saint Mary’s College of California
  • Steve Perisho, Seattle Pacific University
  • Connie Song, Mount St. Mary’s Seminary and School of Theology
  • Stephen Sweeney

Members Absent

  • Brian Morin, Mt. Angel Abbey
  • Alan Krieger, University of Notre Dame
  • Jérémie LeBlanc, Saint Paul University

Year in Review

As in recent years, the in-person gathering of Atla’s Roman Catholic denominational group was purely for enjoyment, having lunch together at Pittsburgh’s Waffles Incaffeinated on the second day of the Atla Annual conference. However, when we join together online, as we did on June 25, it was all business! We updated one another on how things are going at our institutions and in our lives, as well as our participation in the conference. We then discussed various perennial topics, such as updates from the Catholic Research Resources Alliance (CRRA) and Catholic Library Association, as well as stewardship of our Atla-hosted research guide and the latest strange happenings from the fine publishers of L’Osservatore Romano. In her capacity as an Atla board member, Jessica Boyer delivered a formal request from the Board for feedback on Atla’s core values. Finally, Brother Andrew was kind enough to pray us in and out of the meeting via “prayer book bingo.”

Agenda

  1. Opening prayer – Br. Andrew Kosmowski, SM
  2. Old Business: Presentations and Atla Annual
    1. Kriegh: “The Atla Code of Conduct: Promoting Shared Values in Atla Spaces” as part of the Conduct Committee.
    2. Hughes: “Collecting Catholic Open-Access Journals,” the Atla Products breakfast on Catholic journal resources, and participation in the Open Press panel discussion.
    3. Sweeney: Part of panel discussion between Atla members of Jeannine Hill Fletcher’s essay “The Promising Practice of Antiracist Approaches to Interfaith Studies.” Also participated in the Code of Conduct presentation and the DEI committee presentation.
    4. LeBlanc: Panel member of “Lessons Learned from Atla OER & Digitization Grant Recipients.”
    5. Morin, Shelton, McManus: “Expanding Research Horizons: The Catholic News Archive as a Resource for Social and Cultural Inquiry.”
  3. CRRA Update
    1. Three sub-committees have been formed and are encouraging people to join–you need not be a part of CRRA. The Membership, Programming, and Strategic Engagement group is planning a fall webinar to update people on the current structure, invite people to join, and communicate last year’s changes. The Technical Access group hopes to reach out to past depositors to update the loading processes, integrate the Catholic Portal with CNA resources, and look at the user experience in the Portal. The Digital Collections group will be working to re-establish contact and survey the members to get a sense of who is interested, what the needs are, and develop a new strategic plan.
    2. Joining CRRA may not be as costly as expected–due to the membership structure of Atla, costs could be as low as $20.
    3. If you are interested in joining CRRA, a sub-committee, or would like more information, contact Brian Morin (brian.morin@mtangel.edu) or Gillian Harrison Cain (crrac@myatla.org).
  4. CLA Update
    1. Membership is up in CLA and is a priority for the incoming board and president, Jennifer Millikan.
    2. An updated strategic plan is in place, with thanks to Stephen Sweeney for chairing that committee.
    3. If you are looking for a place to publish for tenure, just a reminder that the Catholic Library World is a peer-reviewed journal.
  5. L’Osservatore Romano
    1. It has changed to a monthly publication. Its publishing has been rather sporadic. It is not available in a digital version.
  6. Atla LibGuide
    1. Just a reminder that this group may be considered the custodian of the Catholic denominational Atla guide. There are many guides in Atla with a Catholic perspective due to the inclusion of the CRRA guides. However, the Atla denominational guide is aimed at those who may have questions or be curious about Catholicism from other perspectives.
  7. New Business
    1. Welcome message from Board of Directors Jessica Boyer: The Atla board has been making a concerted effort to connect with the moral owners of Atla (the membership) for feedback on the Core Values statement prior to the board review in October. A member of the board has been attending each of the denominational meetings for feedback. Jessica will send the statement to the group list-serv. In turn, please send any comments to her responding to the following questions: Do these values of the association resonate with you as a member? Is there a value you don’t see reflected? Is there a value you think is no longer relevant?
  8. Closing Prayer – Br. Andrew Kosmowski, SM

Round Robin Reports

St. Mary’s College of California: The library has been asked to cut $100k from the collections budget. David Kriegh is now assigned as the liaison to the history department, in addition to being the selector for theology and religious studies.

Sacred Heart Seminary and School of Theology: Ann Owen is retiring and her replacement is Katie Utschig, former SWITCH Consortium director. Enrollment is steady or increasing and they will begin the search for a new library director in spring.

Graduate Theological Union: GTU library is giving up more space to accommodate one of the schools. Print journals will be eliminated by January and 680 standing orders have been cancelled. They can buy eBooks via EBSCOHost and some items are being sent to the Internet Archive.

North American Center for Marianist Studies: As of April, Br. Andrew is past-president of CLA and is a doctoral candidate in educational leadership. He hosted three overseas confreres and offered a crash lesson in cataloging and running a Marian Study Center. They had a slight budget increase approved. Br. Andrew also contributed a link to a source for French eBooks: https://www.biblioondemand.com/

Mount St. Mary’s University: They migrated to Alma/Primo and it is going well so far. They also launched a library liaison program and hired two new employees, Kevin Aughinbaugh, Digital Services Librarian, and Delaney Runge, Library Services Coordinator. They received an Atla Library Impact Grant to sponsor five talks about items from the rare books collection, some given by faculty. There has been stable enrollment and the institution has had several leadership changes over the last year.

Catholic International University: A budget increase enabled them to purchase OCLC’s WMS Online Only (the Atla discount helped a lot). Enrollment is up, but not as high as they’d like. They will be hiring a part-time librarian whose first language is Spanish to assist students with research and writing.

Barnaby Hughes (Atla): In addition to indexing duties, he is also production editor for Atla Open Press. There are new editors for TCB and Open Press recently published Stephen Sweeney’s book in the Theological Librarian’s Handbook series.

Stephen Sweeney: Edited Management in Theological Libraries, volume five, in the Theological Librarian’s Handbook series. He is searching for a new position.

Seattle Pacific University: SPU is in a serious budget crisis mode and they have not been allowed to order books for two years and have reduced available databases. They have minimal standing orders and the School of Theology gave the library an amount of money from their faculty development funds to purchase items. His position has been reduced to 0.8 time because the school closed the philosophy, theology, and history undergraduate programs. He has been processing 30 boxes of materials from a retired Lutheran pastor, which contain some treasures.

University of Notre Dame: ND is transitioning from Ex Libris’ old Aleph system to a new LSP (Library Services Platform) in the summer of 2026. It will be EBSCO FOLIO on the “back end” and almost certainly VuFind (used by CRRA’s Catholic Portal) as the discovery layer. There is a lot of staff training this year in preparation.