The theological library in Osijek is among the richest in Southeast Europe

A recent new shipment from Boston has made our library richer by 20,000 books. The library now owns 140,000 books, with this contributing collected and sent by Christian Book Distributors.

„Two years have passed since the last major donation. This pandemic has taught us that books are a source of knowledge, as opposed to the information we are bombard with, that they bring us joy when news are dim, and that they enrich us in every way. Therefore, we believe this step is worth the effort because it contributes to another positive event in our city, Osijek, as recognizable on the map of Europe as a city with one of the richest theological libraries!", said dr. Peter Kuzmič, dean of the Seminary.

Our Seminary is growing into a research center for theology and related fields, as shown by the numerous doctoral students who come from Central and Southeast Europe to our city every summer to work on their research. Thus, from 2016 until now, about seventy doctoral students from ten countries came to Osijek and spent two to four weeks in our city doing research. "In addition to the library, our Seminary has other options available to students, such as living accomodations in the newly renovated student dormitory, meals in the onsite cafeteria, and the use of classrooms and offices, while respecting all the measures demanded because of the global pandemic", said Maja Séguin, secretary of the Seminary.

The library is attractive to researchers because it contains titles in Croatian, but also in many other languages, such as English, German, French, Russian, from various fields such as theology, philosophy, sociology, psychology and other, which are often not available in different formats.

"In addition to this donation, our library managed to purchase theological titles in the field of biblical theology published in 2018 at a reduced price due to a cooperation with the large publishing house Baker. With a recent visit to Grand Rapids, we also reached an agreement with the publishing house Zondervan for a major discount on further book purchases, and similar agreements have been initiated with the Theological Book Network, a company that donated three boxes of books of our chosing. Among the books that arrived, I would like to emphasize the following authors - Craig Keener, Richard Bauckam, Jonathan Pennington, as well as three volumes of books called The Context of Scripture", said the Seminary's librarian Matej Sakač.