| Yolo Catholic index |
Religious Libraries and Religious Resources in Secular Libraries available to Davis Catholics. |
The Internet offers vast resources to everyone including Catholics, but this is local page about the specific resources available to Davis Catholics in our local, and regional libraries. It is also useful for Yolo county Catholics, and more generally Catholics in the Sacramento area. Among the resources offered by the libraries is the Internet. Both the university library and the public library have many public access terminals and the public library has WiFi. But in addition to that the public library offers materials you can check out, I know, how old fashioned.
Public LibraryReligious books are found in non-fiction in the 200s, from 200 to 300. This is true in the children's section as well as the adults. I note this because many people seem to understand that there is a religion section for adults, but assume there is not one for children, there is.You can also find religious books in biography, for example, The Story of a Soul, The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux. You can also find religious novels in fiction, for example, The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene. There are many relatively new sections to the public library with media other than traditional books. Most popular are the DVDs. There are quite a few inspiring religious DVDs, both movies and a television show, Touched by an Angel. The DVDs float around among the various branches of the library system. If you find them on the catalog at another branch you can request them and they will be brought to the Davis branch for you. After you return it, the DVD will circulate in Davis until requested by a patron at another branch. You can find a partial list of religious movies and televisions shows on DVD and VHS at the Yolo County libraries here. You can see which branch currently has these videos by checking the Yolo County library catalog. In addition to the DVDs both adults and children, you can find religious materials on VHS, in the music CDs, and the young adult graphic novels section. Graphic novels are long, often pretentious comic books. They are graphic because they have pictures, not because of the subject mater. Here is a list of religious graphic novels in the Yolo County libraries. Your Yolo County library card gains you access to the resources of all the branches in the Yolo county library system, but you do not have to limit yourself to the Yolo County system. You can get a library card in Sacramento or Woodland that allows you to access all the material in their much larger system. Woodland is the county seat of Yolo County, but their library is in the Sacramento system, not the Yolo system. Here is a link to the Sacramento Library Catalog so you can see if you are interested in their material. University LibraryThere is a massive collection of religious books in Shields Library on the University of California, Davis campus. You will find them on the bottom floor. I believe there are something like 50 thousand books. You can read the books at Shields library for free, or purchase a card if you are not a UC student, faculty, or staff member. You can check out the UC Davis library religious collection through their on line catalog.The state has another major library you can access in this region, the library for the state legislature. The state equivalent of the famous Library of Congress in Washington. While this is a fine library for many things, it has almost no religious materials. I mention it just to warn you not to waste your time looking for religious materials there. Graduate Theological UnionIf you are involved in really serious research, the Graduate Theological Union, GTU, in Berkeley has what maybe the largest religious library in the country. This is the library for a collection of religious schools, three of which are Catholic. The library is just north of the North Gate of the University of California, Berkeley campus. This is the web site for the GTU library.Many years ago I published a news article in the religious section of the Sacramento Bee in which I covered much of this material. I believe that was the only news article I published in a major newspaper. Index of my pages for Davis, Yolo, and Sacramento Area Catholics You can look me up in the church directory, or the local phone book. Other contact information is here.
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