The International Voluntary Association Saints’ Methodius and Cyrill Christian Educational Centre has a library numbering about 14000 volumes including the editions of bibliographic rarity. This is mainly theological, religious and philosophical literature in Russian, German, English, French and Italian as well as patrological literature in ancient Greek and Latin, divine service literature in Church Slavonic.

The library stock is being constantly replenished, among other sources thanks to the help of a number of universities of Germany, Italy, France, the USA and the publishing houses “Life with God” and “Christian Russia”. Due to the special grants of international charity foundations SPCK Worldwide (UK), Feed the Minds (UK) è Communicates (the Netherlands) over 1000 books was acquired. At present the library contains the publications by the authors from almost all Christian confessions and denominations as well as other religions, a great number of books on philosophy, psychology, cultural studies, history and other humanities. The library has more than 30 000 electronic publications on computer database, over 400 multimedia materials (audio- and videocassettes, as well as the stock of photocopied teaching materials of various religious educational establishments on CD and CD-ROMs). Copying was done with the permission of the copyright holders. The library receives more than 20 titles of specialized periodic press.

Originally the library was established for the students and teachers of the faculty but now it is accessible to many interested readers with the teachers of the main universities in Minsk, academics, representatives of various religious organizations as well as people who are simply interested with religious questions.

While realizing this project the Centre faces great difficulties in the following areas. Stock replenishment. Most of the new books come through the help of foreign universities. The financial resources of the Centre to buy textbooks in the necessary number of copies as well as expensive editions published in a small number of copies. Additional financing is required to buy all necessary literature in the relevant field, multi-media materials and to subscribe to special periodic press. Besides, additional resources would permit to revive our programme of sending spiritual literature to regional libraries which was suspended in 2001 due to the lack of finances. Premises. At present the library occupies the rooms with total space of 28,6 sq.m. which are not fit for the purpose and do not allow to accomodate even the existing stock. A great amount of the literature has to be placed in other rooms of the theology faculty including the classrooms. The reading hall is in a classroom and operates only outside the class time. The Centre allocated to the library the rooms with a total place of 95 sq.m. in its own building which is a historical monument and also reserved some other rooms in the same building with a space about 120 sq.m. The Centre financed works on developing the reconstruction project of the building but has no funds for reconstruction and repairs of the library rooms. Equipment. At present the library has computerized workplace of the librarian, personal computer with the electronic catalogue and jet printer to catalogue cards. Computer display does not meet the current ergonomic requirements. The computer is not connected to the faculty and center local network because of the high costs of cabling. The workplace is not equipped by a modem which does not give a possibility to use the internet resources. He library has no copying equipment nor scanner which limits its possibilities both in replenishing the stock and rendering services to the readers. The software installed was developed in the 1980s and it is not always compatible with modern hardware. The software does not allow to place the library catalogue in the internet and has no interface to work with electronic texts. The work is further by the lack of the CD- recording connector. The library is not equipped with the air conditioning control which in the long term threatens the library stock. The absence of a computer in the reading room does not permit the readers to use electronic texts and multi-media CD-ROMs and the internet resources.