J.S. Mack Library
John Sephus Mack
(1880-1940) first met Dr. Bob Jones Sr. while serving on the organizing committee for a
1927 Jones revival campaign in Pennsylvania. J. S. Mack was the president of the G. C.
Murphy stores and came alongside the college to assist it financially. He more than
proved the truth of his statement that "I am going to put my shoulder to the
wheel and help you in a big way." By the late 1930's, J.S. Mack had gone so far
as to tell Dr. Jones to "construct your buildings and send me the
bill." To express their appreciation, the Board of Trustees awarded him an
honorary degree of Doctor of Philanthropy and named the library in his honor.
Originally built in 1947, the beautiful Mack Library was expanded in 1980 to almost 90,000 square feet of floor space. This modern facility offers seating for over 1,200 and includes individual study carrels, open bookstacks in the reading areas, a large periodical room, a classroom and computer lab, and a library instruction classroom.
Other prominent features include the Jerusalem Chamber, a replica of the room in Westminster Abbey in London in which work was accomplished on the 1611 King James Bible, and the University Archives Room which displays materials about the Founder and history of the University.
Patrons are served by a staff of 22 and a student staff of about 55.
Approximately 301,000 volumes are housed in the collection, and over 1,100 current periodical titles are received. In addition, over 19,000 music CD's and recordings, speech recordings, and videos are available in the Music Library, a branch of the Mack Library.
The library features an integrated library system including an online catalog and a circulation system and cataloging module. These units provide a system whereby the patron, from one of the fourteen public access terminals, can perform subject, author, and title searches and determine the circulation status of a book. In addition, there are ten Internet stations and three CD-ROM stations. The library subscribes to over forty databases either on-line or on CD-ROM. Books not held in our library may be obtained by interlibrary loan through OCLC, a national database. Furthermore, patrons have access to DIALOG, which provides on-line searching for magazine and other non-book information in over four hundred databases.