The Charles L. Souvay, C. M. Memorial Library at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary serves the Church by preserving its textual traditions in both print and electronic form for the current and future education needs of faculty and students. The collection supports the theology and philosophy programs of the institution with some holdings in other areas. The collection consists of over 98,000 items with considerable concentrations, in addition to philosophy and theology, in canon law, history, biography, and the arts. The library subscribes to print and online journals yielding several thousand journal titles available in full-text.
To further enhance its offerings, the library is a member of MOBIUS (Missouri Bibliographic Information Users System). This membership allows faculty and students to link to other libraries throughout the state to request volumes. The MOBIUS catalog contains over 8.6 million titles (including 5.8 million unique titles) and over 23 million volumes available for request. Delivery of books occurs during the work week; usually requested books are available within three working days.
Other non-print materials include an extensive music collection on compact disc and a DVD collection which provides films of religious inspiration, biographies, church and secular history, theology, and light entertainment.
The library also includes various special collections which includes more than 3,000 titles. The largest of these special collections is the Rare Books Collection whose rarest and oldest item is a late thirteenth century French canon law manuscript. An incunabulum Bible from 1495 is included in the collection. There is also a collection of catechisms dated prior to the Second Vatican Council.
Three other collections complement the library’s holdings. The Code collection holds important volumes of Catholic Americana. The Merton Collection consisting of all the published books, periodical literature, and audio recordings of Thomas Merton. Important to the history of the liturgical movement is the Hellriegel Collection which is made up of books and memorabilia gathered by Martin Hellriegel, a Saint Louis priest and liturgical music pioneer.
