Notes from the Road: Graduate Theological Union

Recently while in San Francisco, I had the opportunity to visit and tour the library at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) in Berkeley, California. GTU has a fascinating history as a consortium of individual schools and centers representing several of the world’s religions and representing a focus on interdisciplinarity and fostering interreligious dialogue and thought.

And what’s even more amazing is that this diverse group of schools and centers are all served by a single library whose collections and archives reflect the diversity of the populations they serve.

During the meeting with several staff members, including library director Clay-Edward Dixon and others, I learned a great deal about GTU’s unique history and how the library has strived to be a hub of knowledge and culture serving the missions of the GTU schools and centers.

I was then treated to a tour of the library and marveled at the abundance of natural light throughout the library, the quiet individual and collaborative study spaces with innovative technology, and the unique display areas that showcase this library’s amazing special collections and archives.

Director Dixon shared with me several of the most interesting and unique items housed in the library’s special collections and archives. The library has a cabinet of artifacts that had been collected during donors’ worldwide travels and then donated to the library for use in teaching and for research. Included in this display of artifacts is a wonderful array of jade pieces and other items of religious and cultural significance.

The library also holds several formats of the Common Book of Prayer in its archives that are technological printing marvels for their age, from tiny “finger book” sized versions whose small type is barely readable to an embossed version that was printed prior to the invention of Braille and intended for persons with blindness.

I was also treated to views of a 17th-century leather bound psalter written in Ge’ez that had been carried by Ethiopian monks and an ancient Buddhist text printed on individual palm leaves.

There were many more interesting items in the library’s collections that are waiting to be discovered and to be part of a scholar’s research and a student’s learning. The next time you are in the San Francisco area add a stop at the GTU Library to your itinerary.