Two broadly different approaches to spiritual practice exist within virtually every religious tradition. Though the specific characterization and evaluation of these different practices vary among authors, their general nature is reasonably clear. The exoteric path represents the more conventional approach to religion involving ongoing participation in the practices and activities of an established religious community (synagogue, church, mosque, temple, etc.). Alternatively, the esoteric path tends to be more individualistic and mystical in orientation. Within a given tradition, the two approaches are never in opposition to each other but can nonetheless involve complex, bivalent inter-relations. The present paper examines these two forms of practice in terms of their informational characteristics. It is primarily concerned with the amount of information each style of practice generates and processes within a small set of general but relevant contexts. It shows that the two styles of practice result in highly characteristic differences in the generation and processing of information. In addition, the paper argues that important consequences of these differences concern how they both reflect and impact the practitioner’s religious faith and their sense of self.

We have taken this as an occasion to revisit the role of browsing in seeking information especially the information of new connections no matter the realm. When one is attempting to go beyond the norm, the recognized public knowledge, one has to search without ordinary finding aids. Finding aids are generally based on what is known. Documents are assigned subject headings from within a list of terms for what is known. Going beyond the norm requires a level of comfort with the unknown and with ambiguity. Setting aside any judgments about Hubbard and Shannon, we see two men capable of striking out into the unknown and making new connections.

Libraries during the classical period in Greece and Rome flourished. These first literate Western societies, promoted literacy and laid the foundation for the development of libraries and the profession of Library and Information Science. However, literacy declined during the middleages and as a result books and libraries all but vanished. One institution survived that was devoted to the preservation of the written word: the Catholic Church. The role of priests and monasteries in the development of cataloging, preservation and the organization of manuscript production pioneered what are common practices in the library profession today. This study traces the evolution of the Catholic Church in the historic development of libraries. A historical approach is used that includes documentary research. Two overarching research questions will be explored: In what ways did the Catholic Church impact the historical development of the Library and Information Science profession? What is the impact of that role today? Findings will provide insight into the relationship of the Catholic Church and its role not only in the development of library and information science, but also its important role in the preservation of religious texts and other information objects.

Pre-classical Greek polytheism, in practice and in poetry, promotes the idea that religion itself is inconsistent. Piety to one deity comes into conflict with piety to another, symbolizing a chaotic and challenging human condition. The late fifth and fourth centuries BCE, however, saw the advent of written prose speeches and dialogues and, at the same time, a movement toward a more transcendent and unified view of religion. Are these two trends related?

Through an intertextual, close rhetorical study of Plato’s Phaedrus and Isocrates’ Busiris, I argue that they are. The advent of circulated prose documents exposed inconsistencies native to polytheism to scrutiny from rival philosophers in the context of a litigious Athenian culture that had already executed Socrates on charges of impiety. This prompted an allegorical debate between Plato and Isocrates about the value of written communication that had its crux in contention over the definition of piety. Both of these influential writers’ attempts to find an intellectual high ground in the debate contribute to a trend toward a more transcendent and unified religion in ancient Athens. A few centuries later, the Graeco-Roman world would adopt the thorough transcendence and unity of monotheism.

While one would not want to draw too strong an analogy with our own context, this study serves as a reminder that new forms of dissemination can expose religious discourse to cultural forces that demand response. The response can change religion significantly, creating new religious paradigms and undermining older traditions.

Music is important in most Christian churches. It is used for many purposes such as supporting belief systems, encouraging proper behaviors, and offering care and comfort. In this discussion, I present an ethnographic, naturalistic study of a largely GLBT (gay lesbian, bisexual, transgender) congregation and how music is used to support the theology and social needs of the church. The discussion will offer a historical as well as a contemporary overview of the use of music as used in the Metropolitan Community Church Austin (a member of the United Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches ((UFMMC)) and how it has evolved since the church’s founding as an independent congregation in 1976. I conclude by offering an explanation for this evolution based on social, political, personal, and administrative situations as they have changed over the 36 years since the founding of the church.

Libraries and archives across the world have played a vital role in enabling access to information to a large number of people. The advent of the Internet and mobile computing has helped accelerate this process of democratization of information. The Bhagavad Gitā (Song of God) is considered the most important among the large pantheon of ancient Hindu scriptures and has influenced people ranging from Gandhi to Thoreau to Einstein. However, just as the problem for most Internet users is no longer one of access, one wouldn’t need to try too hard to access the Gitā. A large number of commentaries have been written on it. The text and many e-books are freely available online. The difficulty lies in comprehension and sense-making, being able to connect-the-dots, turning information into knowledge and application. Drawing upon the literature on accessibility and the sense-making theory, this paper will report work-in-progress in synthesizing different commentaries of the Gitā and bringing out key messages using simplification and visualization techniques. The work should help the Facebook generation make sense of the key messages and life lessons from the Gitā. Also, a reader would be able to make an informed judgment rather than relying on any one commentary. The 8-step methodology explained should also be useful in synthesizing the commentaries on the holy texts of other major religions of the world.

Keywords. Accessibility, sense-making, Bhagavad Gitā, synthesis, visualization.

By the end of the twentieth century, some striking parallels can be seen in the academic disciplines of women’s studies and religious studies. This paper will explore some of these parallels as well as some of the difficulties that face the intersection of these to fields. This exploration will be done by comparing research and teaching methods through the reading of scholarly works by leaders in both fields. The paper will look at the methodologies used by women’s studies scholars for the traditionally male-dominated field of religious studies. These reformers think that it is necessary to ask new questions, collect new data, offer new analyses, and develop new theories to do justice to the voices of women. What might these new ways of gathering and interpreting information mean for academic research in the twenty-first century?

This paper examines the role archives and special collections (ASCs) play in information literacy instruction (IL) in academic libraries, and explores how ASCs can use primary resource instruction to improve existing IL instruction programs for undergraduate students. An examination of the literature indicates significant possibilities for undergraduate IL instruction by ASCs. Lacking assessment and a dearth in literature suggest future research is needed to determine how ASCs can provide IL instruction most efficiently and effectively. Existing studies primarily utilized qualitative designs to explore the perceived success of new and existing ASC IL endeavors. Future research will benefit from quantitative analysis of multiple ASCs that will produce more generalizable data. Additional research focuses on other non-traditional primary resource repositories which are also concerned with IL and its instruction. An interdisciplinary review examines theological schools and seminaries and museums as alternative disciplines publishing on IL instruction and invested in primary resources. The review indicates significant referencing of library and information studies within the literature from theological schools and museums which suggest cross-discipline cooperation could greatly improve research and practice. Overall trends indicate research on IL instruction and ASC is increasing. Though published research and reports provide examples of successful ASC IL instruction initiatives, additional research of initiatives using thorough and unbiased assessment of success is needed to determine how specific IL outcomes are achieved through ASC instruction.

Discovery. It means different things to different people. It rarely happens quickly. More often, it involves peeling away layers of meaning to discover a hidden essence. Even with a revelation, discovery resembles sculpting; refining the revelation to reveal its essence. Slavic medieval manuscripts, appearing at first glance to be poor orphans, have revealed themselves to be giants of human dignity. They represent the survival through unimaginable sufferings of marginalized people during truly evil times.

Access to these Slavic manuscripts, however, presents unique problems to the scholar. Western institutions tend to marginalize Slavic manuscripts. I believe this marginalization comes from the poor condition of many manuscripts and because of misconceptions about their intellectual value. Only recently has inter-disciplinary interest expanded manuscript research beyond previous boundaries through the technologies of information science and the viewpoints of literary criticism, historiography, and hypertext theory.

I describe here my discovery of the cultural heritage of Slavic manuscripts and my application of interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks to them. I also describe efforts to preserve and provide access to these artifacts through conventional conservation techniques and through electronic publishing.

Hymnary.org is a large hymnological database that provides information about thousands of hymnals and millions of hymn instances. It has media files and nearly 2,000 scanned hymnals. The authors conducted a user survey between August 1, 2011 and January 31, 2012 to determine a typical user profile and user expectations of Hymnary.org. Respondents were asked to provide information about themselves, their interest in hymnody, how they found Hymnary.org, how they used it, and whether the database met their information needs. The survey revealed that frequent users are most commonly involved with worship planning, followed by users with an academic interest in hymnological information. The primary entry point to Hymnary.org was a search for a specific hymnal, and users were interested in both text and tune information. Users show a need to understand the limitations of copyright, and to be made aware of the commercial hymn arrangements available via Hymnary.org.

Keywords: Hymns, hymnology, database, user survey

A pastor’s dream is having an infinite amount of information available to craft a sermon on the go. While most trained pastors understand and have been exposed to traditional resources, time and convenience hamper the writing experience of sermons on a weekly basis. During my time at Waldorf College in Iowa I held a workshop with area pastors on how to find information for sermon preparation. They indicated to me during the workshop that this infinite resource was available to them called Google. Google was fast, convenient, and even had prepared ‘open source’ sermons for use. Biblical texts were exegetically broken down in many viewpoints which made inclusiveness even easier.

This paper is a report from a series of three workshops working with pastors on finding resources for sermons. Included is a pre-workshop survey in which they explained their research methodology and knowledge of both academic and spiritual based sermon aids, and general knowledge of computer skills. From this survey the workshops took on the question; “Is ‘Googling the scriptures’ the way to write a sermon?” The paper also explores the conversations and results of the workshops. By the third workshop we constructed a sermon aid user guide and I revealed how ‘pastors’ can use an academic library in sermon preparation.

The purpose of this study is to examine the conventional wisdom, particularly worries that the online communication paradigm may not be in the best interest of the church because of its tendency toward individualism instead of communalism. This concern will be compared with recent research that shows how people appear to actually use online communication tools, and how disseminating information online can extend the reach of the local church.

In creating an appraisal policy to support the documentation of a church, synagogue or other religious movement, an archives must decide whether to gloss over the religious aspect of its mission and seek to document itself as an organization which happens to be religious, or to attempt to engage the messy question of belief to document the faith group itself. This paper will examine the problems and possibilities of appraisal in religious archives. I will first discuss the development of the last forty years of appraisal theory regarding religious archives, and then examine how that literature has been applied at the Archives of the Episcopal Church, a religious repository in Austin, Texas. Finally, I will discuss how a repository could combine the implications of both the literature and its application at the two repositories to create or update an appraisal policy that would support the full and faithful documentation of a religious group, using the newly-established archives of the Austin’s Congregation Agudas Achim as an example.

Traditional literature reviews (TLR) are found in all disciplines including religion. In TLR a research question is chosen, resources are identified that have information relevant to the question, and one uses information from the resources to address the TLR question. Such reviews give writers and readers background knowledge, help them get up to speed, or help to set the stage for further research. In academia, projects supported by TLR include student papers, theses and dissertations, grants, and articles. In a religious community, sermons and religious instruction might be served by TLR. The information explosion is ongoing, and so TLR clearly have value. In addition, however, in the health and social sciences the "systematic review" (SR) is now widely viewed as an important alternative for those doing and reading literature reviews. Two reasons are frequently given for why the conclusions in SR receive special attention: 1. comprehensive literature searching is used (important for limiting bias), and 2. detailed/transparent reporting of methods are used (making replication and evaluation of methods possible). SR can increase confidence in conclusions of reviews.

A part of the first author’s research on SR, philosophy, and religion involves exploring the possibilities of SR for research in religion. A “scoping review” (type of SR) examined the literature on TLR and SR methods in and for religion. Although TLR were found in the religion literature, SR were not. Drawing on significant SR methods literature, a SR model was developed that could provide a more rigorous framework for literature reviews in religion.