The World Council of Churches (WCC) announced last week the launch of the first online digital library covering theology and ecumenism. The goal is to help close the information gap between North and South.
Anglican Communion News Service has the story:
The library, which will initially contain nearly half a million articles, represents “a key to social development, church development and the integrity of the churches’ witness,” said the Rev. Dietrich Werner, of WCC’s program on ecumenical theological education, at the launch at the WCC’s headquarters in Geneva.
The library can be accessed at www.globethics.net/gtl and uses the electronic platform of Globethics.net, a Geneva-based organization that manages a digital library on ethics containing more than 650,000 documents.
GlobeTheoLib is available free of charge to registered users and will offer resources in ecumenism, biblical and church studies and contextual theologies, Werner said. He added that it will help promote the sharing of theological perspectives between fast-growing churches in the global South and established churches in the North.
It could become “the richest source for theological knowledge in our times,” said Ivan Zhelev Dimitrov of the Conference of Orthodox Theological Schools.
GlobeTheoLib will accept documents in any language, but user languages are currently English, French, German, and Spanish. There are plans to add Greek, Russian, Indonesian, Chinese, Arabic and Portuguese, organizers said. Christoph Stuckelberger, executive director of Globethics.net, said the theological library offers “new possibilities for international networking, exchange and digital sharing.”
You can access the library here.
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There’s something very curious about a digital library on ethics that offers no ethical justification for the fact that it requires users to register in order to read. While the library is available at no monetary charge, this is not free (libre). Or are we to assume that in ethical terms the only meaningful measure of freedom is monetary cost?
Neel Smith