Christians in Library and Information Services (formerly Librarians’ Christian Fellowship) offers a variety of conferences, lectures, and visits designed for Christians who work in library and information services of all kinds and who want to live out their faith in their chosen professions.
For many members, however, particularly if they are unable to attend meetings, their main link is through our quarterly magazine Christian Librarian which covers current issues in library work, publishing, information technology, and communications generally.
Recent issues have included articles on library book spending, artificial intelligence, sharing faith in the workplace, church libraries, films and faith and the problem of fake news.
“I am grateful for CLIS. As a member for some years, I have learned much from other Christians, both from their professional skills and their friendship. The conferences are invariably stimulating and help to keep us up to date with present concerns in the area of Christianity in the workplace. Lectures are intended to be of interest to the wider public and have included some well-known figures in literature and publishing, such as G. P. Taylor.
Our publications helpfully contain transcripts of all talks, whether from guest speakers of from within our own membership, so you always have the material to refer back to. The publications also include a lot of news items which are of interest to not only librarians, but also anyone interested in Christian publishing, media and the arts. I’ve also enjoyed the visits to libraries and other venues which have a Christian input. Although it is a while ago now, I found it useful to include CLIS (then LCF) activities into a report which went towards chartered status: in the subsequent interview the adjudicators noted how interesting our activities looked.
I believe CLIS still has a part to play in the library and information professions and look forward to how we can serve in the future.” — Robert Foster, assistant librarian at the Royal College of Music and also chair of Christians in Library and Information Services.
