Theological Distance Ed. and Library

Can one proceed with a distance ed. degree without having access to a good library?
I am thinking of pursuing a MTh and/or DTh (possibly through a SA institution), but have no access to a good theological library (or even a not so good theological library for that matter) for research. The nearest one that could serve my purposes is probably a 5-6 hour drive.

Does this make such studies difficult or impossible, given the research content of such degrees?

 

This will make matters difficult. It may require you to spend a small fortune at Amazon.com. Additionally, you would certainly need to make that 5-6 hour trip periodically to provide you the opportunity to explore the relevant journals in your discipline. At the very least, it would be great if you could establish some sort of interlibrary loan arrangement between your local community or university library and the library to which you refer. Not sure if this would be possible.

I wish you well as you sort out these details.

 

There are lots of on-line materials, but none that are really adaquate as stand-alone resources for graduate-level research purposes. (That's probably true in any field, not just theology.)

You might try talking to your local librarians and seeing what kind of inter-library loan arrangements they can cook up for you. If you can give them titles of books and journal articles, they might be able to get them for you from other libraries. (As I recall, Ted Kaczynski [the Unibomber] used to order obscure academic titles throuh his tiny rural Montana public library.)

But ultimately, you will probably have to plan on making several expeditions to physically visit appropriate academic libraries. (And you will have to make sure that they will let outsiders into their stacks, which doesn't always happen. A letter of introduction from your DL school should help there.)

I think that this is one of the big problems with distance education that doesn't get nearly enough discussion.

 

In my case, the nearest theological libraries are 2 hours north, 4.5 hours south, and 4.5 hours east. In my research proposal, I had to explain how I would be utilizing these facilities.

 

that's encouraging

Thanks Cory,

At least it's encouraging that you have to drive too. I'm in Bakersfield, where the closest, general theology library is in Pasadena, 1.5 hour drive.

When I start crafting my proposal, I'll have to look into the ILL agreement thing.

Chris