Library Careers Program: Intern Notes As American Christians, we have the blessing of being able to easily access Christian and theological resources Unfortunately, this is not true for many communities around the world, but a missions organization called Open Door Libraries is trying to change that. ODL’s vision is to provide inviting spaces that support local churches and Biblical Heritage Gallery The current Biblical Heritage Gallery exhibit focuses on the most familiar verse in the English Bible, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosever believeth in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Entitled “Love in any Language”, this exhibit highlights John 3:16 in Bibles of different languages in the “world” that God “so loves.” Out of over 7,000 languages in the world, the complete Bible is currently translated into about 750 languages, with the New Testament translated into an additional 1,700 languages, and smaller portions of the Bible into over 1,200 other languages. Bibles included in the exhibit are from Albania, Bulgaria, Philippines (Cebuano), China, France, Germany, Ivory Coast (Guere), Japan, Lebanon, Navajo, Russia, and Spain. Visit the Biblical Heritage Gallery in the upper level of the library to get a small taste of God’s love in any language. by Justin Kemp allow seekers to learn about Christianity. In the summer of 2024, I had the privilege of interning with two Open Door Libraries locations in Central Europe. I spent the first three weeks of my summer at Connections in Berlin, Germany. The three-room library functions like a community center, providing reservable rooms for Bible studies and church gatherings and a coffee bar to invite the local community in. While I worked on some “librarian” tasks like labeling new books, I spent most of my time in Berlin having conversations with local Christians and Berliners seeking answers to their spiritual questions. For the last four weeks, I interned at Crossroads, a small public library serving Prague, Czechia. In Prague, I explored the challenges of international librarianship—imagine large portions of your library collection being in languages you don’t speak! As much as I loved working with the books, my favorite memory from Prague was serving with an English camp hosted by the library, through which we were able to share the Gospel with several children. ODL was a special experience because it allowed me to develop library skills with a focus on community engagement and sharing my faith.
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