His Word Christian Library, Chickasha, Oklahoma, Librarian: Amanda Smith.

As a lifelong reader, I have always loved books. As a mother I am proud that I have passed that love on to my children. In every home we had, our children had bookcases full of books in their rooms, which would lead to aggravation because everyone wanted to read someone else’s beloved books. So when we finally moved into our forever home eight years ago, we transformed a walk-in closet (4ft by 6ft) in the living room, that the previous owners had used as a tiny office, into a library. With everyone’s books together, our children could now read any book without another child fussing. Not to mention that now the kids’ rooms were so much bigger without several bookcases. Our kids loved to talk about their “library” and show it off to family and friends.

Our family of voracious readers visited the public library every couple of weeks, and once we started homeschooling six years ago we visited every week. When our oldest two were in elementary school, I realized that I would have to start previewing the books and dvds that they were checking out from the library. It was a hard task since they read so fast, and once our youngest started reading, keeping up became overwhelming. I tried to focus on helping the older kids pick out appropriate books while they helped their younger sister pick out books. We started going to library sales, the used book store and Thriftbooks.com to slowly fill our own library at home so that we depended on the public library less. With limited funds it was difficult to keep up with their want of something new to read so I started searching online for help. I used search words such as: alternatives to the public library and Christian libraries. The only library I found was a public Christian library in St. Peters, MO, Family Vision Library, which is eight hours away.

I was frustrated, and then God started telling me to open my own library. I thought that there was no way I could open my own. In vain I tried doing research on how to open a library, but I couldn’t find anything. I emailed Family Vision Library asking for guidance and advice. The man running it, Brandon Bond, emailed me and was very generous with his time. I called and he answered my numerous questions. At the time I thought that the only option for me to open a library would be a mobile library, thankfully God said no to that. At the same time we were still using the public library, but the resources available to my children were pushing an ideology that we found evil, and the atmosphere of the library itself was becoming unsafe. There was, and I’ve heard, still are, a large number of homeless people just sitting or even lying around the library including in the children’s and teen sections. I could not let my kids freely walk around or use the bathroom at the library. I scanned through every book my youngest checked out (at this point my older two could make those decisions on their own), but I didn’t look at every picture or read every word. When she checked out a graphic novel, The Cardboard Kingdom, it was the last straw. I had to finally listen to God and open my library.

I opened His Word Christian Library one year ago with three bookcases, a couple hundred books and no patrons. I now have walls of bookcases, almost 4,000 resources and eleven patrons. We have been blessed with a lot of book donations. At first I accepted everything, and now I am being much pickier and having to go back and majorly weed. We are located in a rural town about fifteen minutes from my house and the library is housed in our church. I am open Tuesdays 4-8 and Saturdays 10-2. Also I am open just to our homeschool co-op families on Monday 3-4ish (since we’re all in town anyway). Our membership fee is $120 a year, but most pay monthly. We rent homeschool curriculum for a semester or year. I enjoy helping my patrons find resources, and I absolutely love the kids telling me about the books, movies or audiobooks they checked out that they loved. If they don’t like something, I want to know that too. My patrons tell me that they appreciate all the work that I’ve done, the money they are saving, and that they now have a place where they can come and let their kids pick out any resource they want without worrying about the content. Some of my favorite moments have been when moms run into each other and start chatting (usually about homeschooling, lol), and I get to see the sense of community we, as lending libraries, are growing. Or when the kids race in and run straight to the touch screen kids’ computer that I found at a library sale for ten dollars, or to the library scavenger hunt posted at kid height. I love the laughter, joy and just plain fun that these families share with me. I love when I get to overhear, “Hey, mom, look at what I found!” We are small, the library itself and the number of patrons we have, but anytime I start talking about it, especially to homeschooling families, they are always excited and usually say something about never having heard of such a thing.

My goal is to be a complete alternative to the public library by offering a variety of Christian creation based resources including books, audiobooks, dvd, cd, games, and homeschool curriculum. In the future I’d like to add homeschool resources such as a laminator, comb binder, and science equipment like telescopes and microscopes. Starting soon I’d also like to add programs such as story times, summer reading programs, and book clubs. I want to have all of the resources that my family used at the public library. I feel that God has called me to run this library and that this is my mission field.

Because I had so much trouble finding a library or how to open/run one I feel very passionate about getting the word out about lending libraries. I had never heard of that term and so I could not type “lending libraries” into the search engine I was using. As an introvert it is very difficult for me to put myself out there to get the word out, not just about my library but about lending libraries in general, but God doesn’t usually call us to do the work that is easy or comfortable for us. I’ve spoken to the missions director, Joey Bacon, for the World Baptist Fellowship Mission about missionaries in the U.S. joining my library or using the directory to find a library close to them. I could ship one box a month in the U.S. to the participating missionaries. I am so very grateful for The Card Catalog for offering so much information on how to open and run a library, also for Biblioguides.com for having a lending library directory. My hope for the future is that there will be at least one lending library in each county/province. I hope that we can work together to share resources like story time supplies or inter-library loans just like the public libraries. I would like to become what libraries used to be, the community hub, where children are safe to explore and just be children.

This article is part of our Librarian Notices series of library stories at The Card Catalog. You can connect with us to comment on this story or any of our other library stories on our Facebook page.