When I was in seminary in the 1970s, the most popular facility on campus was not the break room, but the bookstore. Students spent hours browsing the stacks and would squeeze out of their meager incomes discretionary dollars for books-books that were not required for classes. That they would buy class textbooks was a given, but students studied additional volumes that would be instrumental to their life-long commitment to ministry. We learned at seminary that a long term investment in tools was needed to equip us for the life to which God had called us ("The Minister's Toolbox: Why Ministers But Books," Beeson [Spring 2011], 17).
My early seminary experience was fairly similar. The library was also fairly popular. But it seems that something has drastically changed. Maybe it was the idea of buying books more cheaply online or the use of the internet and Bible software as the research tool of choice. But I suspect that at bottom it is probably that books in general are being read less-and-less these days. If true, that is unfortunate.
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