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Ceiling from original Woodstock College Library

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Woodstock Theological Library

The Woodstock Theological Library is one of the oldest and most notable Catholic theological libraries in the United States. Founded in 1869 at Woodstock College (outside Baltimore, Maryland), it sojourned from 1969 to 1974 in New York City. With the 1974 closing of Woodstock College's Columbia University incarnation, the library moved to Georgetown University, Washington, DC, to become the research tool for the Woodstock Theological Center. Owned by the Maryland and New York provinces of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), the library is currently housed as a separate collection in Georgetown's Joseph Mark Lauinger Memorial Library for use by Georgetown university students, by students and scholars of theology within the Washington Theological Consortium  and the central Atlantic states, and by scholars from around the world. In 2001 WTCL became a member of the Washington Research Library Consortium.

The collection contains approximately 190,000 circulating volumes, 700 periodical titles, as well as an up-to-day reference collection. It is especially strong in the areas of biblical studies, spirituality, church history, the Jesuits, liturgy, and the social aspects of Christianity. Its rare book holdings of over 17,500 titles is an outstanding collection of 15th through 19th century counter-reformational and American theological works. In 2002, the library began to make available on its web site a number of primary Jesuit texts, including selected letters and instructions of St. Ignatius of Loyola, and the complete works of John Courtney Murray, S.J. We also house two collections of primary works by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. Here you can link to the catalog for the Teilhard Schmitz-Moormann Collection, including copies of most of Teilhard's published and unpublished writings and to an index to our George Barbour/Teilhard collection, including a 1934 film of Barbour/Teilhard in China. We have recently acquired a collection of primary Jesuit resources assembled by Libreria Antiquaria Soave, Torino, entitled De Societate Jesu. It is a collection of primary texts stretching from the founding of the Jesuits to the Suppression in 1773. A PDF of the Italian catalog of this collection is available at Soave Collection.

Not all Woodstock resources are currently electronically visible on Georgetown University's on-line catalog, HoyaSearch, or on WorldCat. Most circulating works have been retrospectively converted and thereby made visible. The titles of most of our periodical holdings are likewise at least rawly available. However, neither specific periodical issue listings nor any of our Special Collections titles have made it into HoyaSearch or WorldCat. (Click here for a title list of our current and past periodicals.) We are currently seeking funding to provide such a service. Our most theologically and historically significant titles, as well as specific periodical issue holdings, only can be retrieved reliably by visiting our conventional card catalog near the Woodstock entrance. Since July 2003, we began cataloging new acquisitions in Library of Congress. All acquisitions up to that date are cataloged and arranged in Dewey. A provided roadmap can aid in locating our various collections. For questions, please email woodstocktheology@georgetown.edu.