IBTS

To serve the European Baptist Federation and wider Baptist community as a theological research community committed to academic excellence, providing extensive resources and disseminating the knowledge gained for the benefit of churches, individuals and ministries in their local context. Our mission is to support, resource, inform and enable Baptist ministry and mission across the EBF region through the provision of educational programmes that are contextually relevant, biblically based, convened and co-constituted in partnerships around the EBF region in the service of EBF member Unions and Seminaries.

The library is located on the first floor of the Baptist House, above the church hall. Our collection of over 40,000 print volumes are all available in open stacks. Because we use the Dewey Decimal System, the library lends itself very well to topical browsing. There are twelve study spaces in the library with free Wi-Fi. Two guest computers allow visitors access to the Digital Theological Library.

Because of limited staffing, the library is only open by arrangement. Please get in touch with the office to arrange your visit.

 We also welcome scholars and students from other traditions to come and visit our library. Borrowing rights can be extended free of charge to all members of the public with a proven research interest.

As a co-owner of the Digital Theological Library (DTL), IBTS is also one of the co-sponsors of the Open Access Digital Theological Library (OADTL). The mission of the OADTL is to curate high-quality content in religious studies and related disciplines from publisher websites, institutional repositories, scholarly societies, archives, and stable public domain collections. The OADTL uses the world’s most advanced integrated library system (ILS) for cataloguing and discovery. This system, OCLC’s WorldShare, makes content easily discoverable and retrievable. The OADTL is staffed by professional librarians and curates content without regard for theological or confessional perspective. It is hoped that the increased access to high-quality religious studies content will serve scholars and students of religion.

The OADTL is free and may be used by anyone with a free ID. Please visit the OADTL here: http://oadtl.org.