A Second Life for Your Library’s Books: The Theological Book Network

It’s hard to communicate the impact of a book that’s not on a shelf.

I spent eight years serving as a professor at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia, a small school perched in the mountains on the wrong side of the city of Medellín. I moved straight to South America from Oxford and during my first year on faculty, I hadn’t fully internalized how limited our library was. (For all its limitations, ours was still the best theological library in the Andes).

So, late in 2014, when a student turned in an essay that had a long discussion of Ezekiel but included no citations of any secondary literature on Ezekiel, I marked him down. He had made some silly mistakes, errors that would have been easily rectified if he had simply bothered to crack the spine of a commentary.

The student appealed the grade: “Profe, lo que pasa es que, no hay ningún comentario sobre Ezequiel en la biblioteca”—“Profe, the thing is, there isn’t a single Ezekiel commentary in the library.”

Incredulous, I hurried the student to the library to direct him to the Old Testament commentaries…and I quickly regretted my incredulity. There were no commentaries on Ezekiel, and the same applied to a number of other books in the Old Testament. I soon discovered that the school’s library acquisition budget wouldn’t allow us to rectify the problem.

Fortunately, I knew who could help.

In May of 2015, a pallet of books was unloaded from a cargo ship at the port of Cartagena and trucked up into the mountains to our little seminary. The librarian and I eagerly hauled box after box indoors and sliced them open to reveal a bespoke collection of theological texts, hand-selected to correct our catalogue deficiencies and designed to prepare us for future program development.

The shipment combined brand-new volumes from Eerdmans, Brill, Baker, Zondervan, and Fortress with classic works donated by US libraries and retiring members of theology faculties. That pallet of books was a game changer for my students; the quality of their work increased dramatically. And emblazoned on the side of each box in bold blue letters was the name Theological Book Network.

Theological Book Network was established in 2004, the result of an eye-opening trip overseas by its founder.  He visited several seminaries in the Global South, and during these visits, a common issue surfaced that mirrored the challenges I experienced at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia—an acute lack of library resources. This stood in stark contrast to the situation in North America, where there is often a surplus of books. Faculty frequently give them away in hallways, libraries are often inundated with donations, and publishers can struggle with extensive overstock lists.

This experience raised a question. What if there was a way to strengthen theological education in the Global South and East with the abundant resources on offer in Western contexts? How could we support these regions where the educational experience is not one of plenty, but of scarcity? If these resources could be redirected, they would play a pivotal role in training and galvanizing indigenous scholarship.

Theological Book Network was created to answer this challenge. Its mission is to curate and deliver high-quality biblical and theological resources to schools in the Majority World. By leveraging economies of scale, it has worked to gather resources here in North America and distribute them to under-resourced seminaries, Bible colleges, and universities throughout the world. Through partnering with us, these institutions have experienced an enrichment of their libraries that would have been unattainable otherwise, equipping them to further scholarship in their own contexts. I saw this firsthand as a professor in Colombia, and so I was delighted when, nine years later, I got the chance to be part of the Theological Book Network team.

We at Theological Book Network (now a program of Scholar Leaders)[i] achieve our mission through the support of individual scholars, institutions, and academic publishers. We carefully curate all our donations to ensure the books we send to our partner schools are of high quality in both content and condition. This ensures that they will not only support the academic life of the school, but also that they can circulate in often non-climate-controlled libraries.

As part of our work, we are often contacted by American institutions at their most difficult moments—times of downsizing or closure. It goes without saying that this is a painful process for staff, faculty, administration, and students. They ask many questions, not the least of which are broader questions of institutional legacy and the years of work invested there. These are important, and deeply personal, questions felt at every level. Yet one of the ways the work and legacy of an institution can live on is through seeding their resources into the Majority World. The work, scholarship, cultivation, and frankly love that goes into a school’s library can breathe new life into other schools that desperately need to be enlivened by these resources and heritage. Theological Book Network provides an opportunity for a school’s legacy to endure and multiply over decades and generations to come.

Theological Book Network stands as a vital conduit for opportunity and knowledge, effectively serving as a key bridge between abundance and scarcity. Through strategic partnerships and careful management of donated materials, TBN enables institutions in the Majority World to enhance their academic offerings, further their scholarly traditions, and make significant contributions within their communities.

Our desire is to see our global partners no longer constrained by what’s not on their shelves, but empowered by what is, and by the scholar leaders that these resources strengthen and support.

If your library or libraries you know would like to participate in this vital work, contact Scott Watson: swatson@scholarleaders.org.

Dr. Christopher M. Hays (D.Phil., Oxon) was Professor of New Testament at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia before becoming President of Scholar Leaders in 2022.

Scott Watson is the Director of Acquisitions for Theological Book Network and works closely with school administrators, faculty, scholars, and librarians to curate resources for Scholar Leaders’ Majority World partners.

[i] In 2024, Theological Book Network merged with Scholar Leaders, and together they continue the important work of providing quality theological resources to schools in the Majority World.