The Lodge where I will become a dual member is in a huge building that use to be the home of many bodies , the Blue Lodge , the White Shrine , the Shrine , the DeMolay and the York Rite . The White Shrine folded many years ago , the OES turned in their Charter and it's members joined in with another Chapter , the Shrine built it's own temple and the DeMolay moved to another Lodge . The Temple is HUGE , each body had it's own room to meet in with storage closets as big as some offices . Now that they are gone , it has left us with a lot of empty space . I am thinking of trying to talk them into creating a Masonic Library . We already have a museum in the building with many books in it that could give us a start . I would just need brothers in the area to help build it up by donating books and research papers to it . Has anyone started a Masonic Library in your Lodge ? If so , how did you acquire all your books ? What all did you add to it ? I would even like to add books from anti-Masons , so brothers can get a peek into the mind of our detractors . If they agree to this , it would be a huge endeavor on my part and any help/input/suggestions would be great . As I said this building is HUGE and we really need to make the best use of it for the betterment of not only our lodge/York Rite members , but for all the Masons in our area .
Inquire with the Lodges in your district about duplicate books that they'd be willing to donate from their collection. My Lodge has come across many books that are given to us by Masonic Widows. They have no use for them, and generally want the Lodge brethren to have them.
I was thinking about that , asking widows that is . I am also going to check with the Grand Lodge . They sometimes end up with all the possessions of a lodge when it goes defunct .
May I be so bold as to recommend: Building Builders Series - Uncommon Catechism for Uncommon Masonic Education - Volume 1, 2, 3 & 4 to your collection.
If you can get your hands on Mackey's Encyclopedia set you'd be golden. Coils, Claudy are good choices for a solid start too. I just finished reading "Is it true what they say about Freemasonry?" I'd recommend that, along with the Anti-propaganda listed inside it's pages.
The Lodge already has your above mentioned books and I have "Is It true......" that I will donate to the lodge .
Just got the Building Series in the mail today. I'll let you know. Would the various Holy Sciptures be a good add to said library? I'm sure you have one version but I do wonder if having all the VSL's to look through would help with the universal understanding.
We lost a Past Master not long ago in a vehicle accident . He had a rather large Masonic library , His wife will be donating them to the lodge .
Our Building is large as well. We had an educational center there for challenged kids that had to shut down and we turned that area into a library. The museum (in another section of the building) had several copies of the "Proceedings on Grand Lodge" dating back to the 1700s. Those filled a couple of shelves by themselves We asked each of the lodges in the building plus the SR, YR, Demolay, etc. to donate anything that would be useful in the library. We got piles of books, mostly fiction, several bibles, and a few masonic books. I donated, to my darling wife's delight, a couple of old laptops I had around the house. we scheduled a work day with the 4 lodges that meet in the building and rehabbed the area quickly. walls were knocked down, paint was applied. We had a nice party to officially open the new library. It gets some use but mostly as a meeting space. We have no formal method of checking out books and probably wouldn't know if any went missing. Cable TV is being installed along with internet access. It worked out very well.
I bought a lot more books then I should have for our Lodge's Library. Amazon.com was my choice. You can try there for used, or ebay.
