RDWLP Inks TREN Licensing Deal

The Ralph D Winter Library Project was able to finalize a licensing agreement with the Theological Research Exchange Network, the premiere distributor of over 10,000 Christian theological theses and dissertations published by students from 70 different institutions. The work is academic and Christian in nature, representing the exact sort of high-quality content we are seeking. The sheer number of titles represents a huge boon for our digital library, at once adding thousands of titles to our standing collection.

The RDWLP staff has immediately begun the process of aggregating and organizing the MARC records that accompanies this collection. As soon as the integration process is done, we will send out an announcement to all of our library partners, making the collection available to your schools as well. Please note that this is a licensed collection, meaning that a separate agreement will need to be made between your institution and TREN. However, we will provide the technical and financial framework for this collection so it will be easy to make it available for your students as well.

We expect to debut the TREN collection when we announce the launch of version 2.0 of our library platform, currently expected to be completed by August 18.

Here are some customer comments about the quality of TREN’s collection:

“TREN’s collection of microfiche dissertations and theses have made an outstanding contribution to our library. Our students regularly use TREN, often finding dissertations on subjects not commonly found in books. Economically priced, TREN provides Christian colleges an affordable way to add a significant number of quality titles to their collection every year. I highly recommend TREN to all theological libraries.”

Mr. Gerald Franz, Library Director
Practical Bible College, Bible School Park, NY

“Increasingly, theological education and religious studies are in the debt of TREN. TREN’s document retention and indexing programs are a decided asset to librarians and scholars alike and we should be grateful to have access to the services of a firm so closely aligned with our interests.”

Dr. Stephen Peterson, Former Library Director
Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT

“TREN fills a significant gap in theological research by making available the growing volume of theses, written at the Masters and D.Min levels. Further, by disseminating these materials in low cost microfiche, it has made large collections affordable to the smallest of libraries. The TREN index alone is a valuable contribution to theological bibliography and belongs in the reference collection of every theological library.”

John Muether, Library Director
Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, FL