Even in today’s online electronic age, libraries are often at the heart of a local community – the same is true for schools, colleges, universities and other seats of learning. The Presbyterian Church in Ireland’s (PCI) Union Theological College (UTC) is no exception, and has held a special event to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Gamble Library.

With the foundation of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland in 1840 most Presbyterian ministers continued to be trained for the ordained ministry at Scottish universities, until the establishment of the Assembly’s College (now UTC) in Belfast in 1853. The coming together of two groupings or Synods to form PCI also brought together two comparatively small libraries. While the library had grown by the opening of the College 13 years later, it was still not sufficient to meet the needs of the wider church – until a substantial gift to the College by Mrs Caroline Anne Gamble, the widow of the minister of Ballywalter Presbyterian Church, to create a library in memory of her late husband Henry.

Her gift of £1,500 in 1872 added 2,500 books to the College’s collection and made possible the conversion of the College’s Common Hall into the ‘Gamble Library’, complete with a bust of her husband. The Library opened on 8 April 1873, the last day of the academic session, and 150 years later, members of Faculty, teaching staff, students, library members and other guests gathered to celebrate that generous gift and the creation of what is now the largest theological library in Northern Ireland.

Speaking about the special event, Joy Conkey, the Library’s 10th librarian, welcomed the opportunity to mark the special event. “As we came together to mark this 150th anniversary, the words of the General Assembly’s Library Committee from 1873 still ring true. In a report of the same year it said, ‘An institution which aspires in any sense to be a seat of learning must possess a well furnished and well endowed library.’

“Today the Gamble Library has around 64,000 books and over 20,000 pamphlets and more than 50 theological journals, which staff, students and members have access to, while not forgetting almost 1,000 eBooks, several key databases and electronic journals that can also be accessed. The Library also holds an array of special collections, with membership not confined to our teaching staff and students, as it is open to all and we have over 320 life and 50 annual members who use the Library.”

During the evening guests were welcomed by UTC Principal, Rev Prof Gordon Campbell, and had the opportunity to view a new exhibition in the Gamble Library. The exhibition was officially opened by Presbyterian Moderator, Rt Rev Dr John Kirkpatrick, who expressed his warm appreciation for the Library as an inspiring venue for study and an enriching facility for intellectual and spiritual growth. Curated by librarian Joy Conkey, the exhibition contains some early and rare additions to the library’s collection that tell the story of The Gamble Library.

Guests also heard a lecture given by Dr Andrew Holmes of the Queen’s University of Belfast’s School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics. Union Theological College’s Rev Dr Martyn Cowan, who lectures in Historical Theology, spoke on religious libraries through the ages.

In his lecture, Dr Holmes gave an overview of Presbyterian education and theology from the early 1800s and then discussed Magee and Assembly’s Colleges and their libraries. He also focussed on the history of the Gamble Library of Assembly’s College, which became Union Theological College with the union of both colleges in 1978.

Key donations and individuals who shaped the collections were examined, as well as the use of the Gamble Library space. Dr Holmes reflected on the challenges faced by the libraries of the Presbyterian Church, such as lack of finance, the necessity of the financial and book donations and their impact on the Library’s holdings, the historical significance of the collections and the importance of the Library as a meeting place. He shared examples of how he had met individuals in the Library who were to have a formative influence on his life and career. He concluded by questioning the future of theological libraries generally, given the increase in electronic resources, but expressed the hope that the Gamble Library’s physical library and collections would continue to develop so that it reaches another 150 year anniversary.

Beginning with the Church in the first century, and ending with the ‘Dissenting Libraries’ of the 17th and 18th centuries, Dr Cowan said that a literary culture was clearly on display during the earliest days of the Church as “Christians were the people of the book”. One example can be found in 2 Timothy 4:13 when the Apostle Paul asks Timothy to bring the books and parchments which had been left in Troas. He also said that Paul’s letters “circulated rapidly enough around the empire, so much so that Peter assumed his audience was already familiar with a collection of Pauline letters,” as we see in 2 Peter 3:15.

Dr Cowan concluded by saying that, “The people of the book are lovers of books and therefore creators of libraries. These fragile institutions are full of promise. They are collections which shape us every bit as much as we shape them. The developments within a theological library often serves as something of an index to the state of the wider church. So as a college we are deeply thankful to God that this library has been preserved and grown over the last century and a half. It is my prayer that the Gamble library would continue to be a place of devotion, formation, and mission.”

Information on library membership can be found on the College website here. An online exhibition on the story of the Gamble Library, curated by Joy Conkey, can also be viewed here.

Photos: (1) Portrait of Mrs Caroline Anne Gamble, the widow of the minister of Ballywalter Presbyterian Church, whose £1500 donation created library in memory of her late husband Henry (3) in front of the bust of Rev Henry Gamble are left to right: UTC's Rev Dr Martyn Cowan, who gave the second lecture of the evening, Rev Principal Gordon Campbell, Joy Conkey who became librarian in 2018, Maureen Carswell, deputy librarian and briefly librarian before Stephen Gregory, who was librarian 1997-2010, QUB's Dr Andrew Holmes, who gave the first lecture, and library assistant Margaret Ollivier (4) Joy Conkey shows the Moderator, Rt Rev Dr John Kirkpatrick, some of the exhibits in the Gamble Library exhibition.