The Future of Storypath
As many of you know, we’ve been out here in internet land for almost 10 years, launching on October 10, 2009 as a way to share book reviews, bibliographies, curriculum and other resources connecting literature for children and youth with faith. In the early years, most of our material came from students in a class co-taught on our Charlotte campus by Pamela Mitchel-Legg and Becky Davis. From the beginning, the site was managed by staff members at the Library on our Richmond, VA campus. As contributions from students dropped as the course that created the content was no longer taught, the Library looked for ways to continue the gifts to the church that had begun from those seminary classes. And so, on August 30, 2010, we began offering Revised Common Lectionary Links to connect texts from the RCL and provide resources to pastors, educators, teachers and parents to make those texts come alive. We also continued to reach out and find graduates who were good writers and understood children’s literature to periodically offer book reviews.
This Friday, we will have completed 9 years of Revised Common Lectionary Links – three complete 3 year cycles. And two years ago, we added Narrative Lectionary Links. Our statistics show that the Lectionary Links are the posts that our readers access the most, and therefore we have focused on finding writers for that content and added fewer book reviews.
Union Presbyterian Seminary Library has financially supported Storypath with staff support and payment to our writers for 10 years now. With changes in staff at the Library in the last few years, we began to look at the future of Storypath. What did we want to offer our readers if Storypath came to an end? We decided on three things:
- We wanted to have 3 complete cycles of the Revised Common Lectionary online (which will happen as of Friday, July 26.)
- We wanted to have one complete cycles of the Narrative Lectionary (one 3 year cycle) which will be complete by mid-July, 2020
- We wanted to continue providing book reviews as possible.
- We would do all of this until funding from the Library ceased in July 2020.
In 2018, Becky Davis, one of the professors from the original class, was called as a full time professor on our Charlotte campus. We have been in wonderful conversations with her about possibly moving Storypath to a new administrative ‘home’ in July of 2020 so that Dr. Davis could expand and grow what Storypath can offer our readers, once again drawing the contributions of students back into mix here. It has always been a commitment to offer the resources of Storypath to the Church at no cost, but I can assure you that there has been substantial financial support by the Union Presbyterian Seminary Library and our Advancement Department who have secured several grants for us. So in order for Storypath to continue past July 2020, we will need to find new financial resources and we intend to work hard during this next year to make sure that happens and that a smooth transition happens from the Library to the new Storypath home. We look forward to updating you in 2020 about how plans are coming for that.
In the meantime, we have one more year that we’d like to make the most of – and that means hearing what would be most helpful to you. Our biggest question is whether more book reviews would be more helpful than another year of Revised Common Lectionary Links since we already have 3 cycles completed of those. Please let us know your preferences by either commenting on this blog post, using our contact form , or by leaving a comment on our Facebook page.
Those of you who use Storypath and have shared with us how it has helped in your ministry are gifts to us. We want to know that we can continue to give you what you most value from our offerings as we finish 2019-2020.
The Future of Storypath by Storypath is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
I have very much appreciated this blog and I hope that it continues – either with new content (book reviews or lectionary links) or in a permanent searchable archive. Thank you for your efforts!
Thanks for weighing in. I cannot imagine that we would not maintain a permanent searchable archive. There is too much here to just have it go away. But of course, we won’t know that for sure until we get through all of our planning for the future this year. But that certainly would be my hope as well.
I regularly use your reviews when I’m called upon to do a Children’s Message. Since, our pastor does not use a lectionary — I generally find what I’m looking for by using the scripture or theme index. I have also used your reviews and other resources in our Children’s Sunday School class (birth to 6th grade). Also, I have shared your bibliographies with the children’s selector at the public library where I work. It would be really sad if you were forced to stop publishing Storypath. I will pray that you are able to continue — for all the great new books.
You might be interested to know that although our usage statistics show that lectionary links are most frequently accessed,the single biggest days we’ve ever had were when we published bibliographies!
This has been such a vital resource for me and I love being able to share the new books for the cycle and seeing the joy on kids faces as they realize this new book is something they’ve just discovered at the bookstore too–keeping current and much loved content add so much to our congregational life. I would love for this to continue but understand the challenge of doing so without financial support.
We hope that it continues as well. All we know right now is that our funding source for the last 10 years is ending in July 2020. We will be spending a lot of time this year exploring how we might keep Storypath going in the future.
I love this site and use it regularly! I’d love to see an updated bibliography section addressing pastoral care situations with children. I’m grateful for this ministry resource! Thank you.
I know that Dr. Davis is very interested in creating pastoral care packets that combine good information about particular situations and what children and young people need with a bibliography of good books to use. Hopefully we’ll see more of that if we are able to continue.
Above all, thank you to those who have created and will craft this wonderful resource.
I use it in a blog to encourage parents/guardians grandparents to share the faith with the under 3’s. Though under 3’s do not always need board books they will happily wander into an older story, i have found that there have been years when a suitable under 3 book has not been reviewed for the RCL. Having said that I have used the thinking of posts to jump start my own search for an age appropriate list. As an Australian i have also used the post ideas to look for a more culturally appropriate book. If you were to broaden your future away from books could I dare to suggest videos, movies or games might be pursued in the same format, RCL. NL and Bibliographies. May future efforts be as much a blessing as the last decade.
Wendy, I love that Storypath frequenty jumpstarts your own thinking about book connections! I’m thinking I saw a site not too long ago that connected videos with children’s faith. If I find it, I’ll post it!
I love Storypath! Thank you for this ministry. I count on you to help me find the best books, both classic and new, sacred and secular. I regularly use the lectionary reviews and greatly appreciate the bibliographies. I would love to see even more ideas for using children’s books to nurture spiritual formation. I’ve even wondered about creating take-home packets to enhance conversations around particular books at home. Although people often buy books online, I’ve also wondered about the feasibility of a book fair to help mainline families, educators, and pastors find good resources that are theologically appropriate. This could be for a region, or perhaps a Presbytery meeting. I’m thankful that there are more mainline publishers with children’s imprints, such as Flyaway Books. Perhaps Storypath could regularly feature short reviews of the best of the new, from both sacred and secular sources. Would a periodic newsletter be possible? I wonder whether you could make creative connections with other blogs, such as Picture Book Theology, which is one of my favorites. If you ask me, good children’s books are good for God’s children of all ages!
Thank you for your support and all of your good ideas! We are taking all of the ideas we are hearing and hoping that as w move past 2020, we can incorporate some of them!