The Statistics:
Twenty-nine years and still growing, the CITS library should always be growing and adding materials which are pertinent to the course of study offered. Last year at this time the CITS library had 14,730 volumes, of which 10,630 were English and 4,100 were Chinese. At this time, the CITS library currently has 15,580 volumes, of which 11,730 are English and 3,850 are Chinese. I realize that if you are reading closely, the number of Chinese books seems to have decreased. Actually, that is not so, but last year when reading the computer count for Chinese books, there must have been an error of some sort, perhaps some duplication in the counting process, becasue this year in the computer count (taken six ways), he account for the Chinese averages 3,850. So that's what we must use. Sorry for the inflated count last year.
We have added many volumes during the past year, about 850, of which probably more than half of them are in Chinese.
We are grateful to all donors and helpers who have made this possible. We continue to be blessed with many book donations each year. There were several large donors this year, some of which were from estates of those who had amassed their own libraries.
The CITS library resides in four locations scattered throughout the campus of the local church. All of the Chinese language books are in one room plus a little beyond; the English language books have three additional locations. In addition, the Irvine campus (Santa Ana) has the capacity for about 3000 volumes. The Irvine collection (included in the above numbers) includes 1228 volumes of which 685 are English and 543 are Chinese.
The Technology
It is true that the Christian church has always made early use of new technology. While the New Testament writings appeared first in scroll form, they eventually appeared in book form known as "codexes" or "codices." And for hundreds of years they were hand copied by scribes or monks ensconced away in some monastery somewhere. But by about 1450 Christian books (starting with the Bible) were printed by use of movable type (Thanks to Gutenberg) which made them much easier to reproduce, cost effective and affordable. they could be owned by the masses. Today, Christian documents are recorded in many ways, including books, computer files, CDs, and storage in the cloud. But books are certainly long lasting and incredibly usable. They do take up space, however, so it is true that the CITS library requires a great deal of space for its thousands of volumes. You hear so much these days about libraries becoming extinct, or that they have lost their usefulness. Thanks to tenacious publishers, this is not soon to happen. If the book is still under the protection of its copyright, it will not become an online resource unless someone pays for it. This means that your favorite commentary will not likely be available online until that commentary becomes part of the public domain.
Dates vary for public domain items. Here is one bit of guidance: In general, works published after 1977 will not fall into the public domain until 70 years after the death of the author, or, for corporate works, anonymous works, or works for hire, 95 years from the date of publication or 120 years from the date of creation, whichever expires first. So, expecting to find your favorite reference material online in public domain may not even happen in your lifetime. Therefore, we continue to add print books to our book collection. We collect books in the printed format both in English and in Chinese. This means that when you need a book for a certain subject in a certain class, you are likely to find something in the CITS library which will be useful to you for that assignment considering the large quantity of books now available. However, we are not a massive library such as Fuller Seminary library which houses more than a half million volumes.
Access CITS Library Online
You can access the CITS library online, which will show you the titles of all books in English. This is true even for books in Chinese. If a book has CH pre-pended to its class number, it is a Chinese-language book. If it has CH appended to its bar code, It is a Chinese-language book. The record of the book in the library may be in English, but the book itself is in Chinese. There are also many books in the library which are in the English language, so no Chinese reference exists in the records for them.
Along with the information in the library's database is also a scanned copy of the book's cover. This is not true for all the books in the CITS library, but it is so for those whose covers appear in the master database and for books recently added to the collection, which a re scanned locally if needed.
This is how you may access the CITS library in order to search online:
You can navigate to the CITS library's OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog). You may access this from any Internet computer using this search: opac.libraryworld.com and then click on OPAC. You will be asked to sign in. Use the library
s name citsemlib; you will not need a password. There are many means of searching: Subject Key Word (All Words), Title, Author, Subject, ISBN, ISSN, Barcode, Call Number, Location, and more.
Helpful Links
There are links on the OPAC Home Page for your benefit. Some of these links will remain indefinitely; others will remain only while timely. You may click on the provided link on the CITS library OPAC page to get to the first step.
You will find links for Hebrew class, Greek class, ebooks in Chinese, Patricia Depew
s dissertation, and more.
A word about Bible History Daily: This is a link which will bring you to a list of free e-book from the Biblical Archaeological Society. Some such titles include: Easter: Exploring the Resurrection of Jesus; Exploring Genesis: The Bible's Ancient Traditions in Context; The Dead Sea Scrolls: Discovery and Meaning; The Galilee Jesus Knew; Islam in the Ancient World. And there are other titles also.
We hope you will avail yourself of the opportunity to use what the library provides.