History of the JKM Library

The JKM Library was originally formed in 1975, after McCormick Theological Seminary sold its historic Lincoln Park campus (now owned by DePaul University) and moved into LSTC's newly-built Hyde Park campus. McCormick brought with them their own Virginia Library, as well as the resources of Lane Theological Seminary (1829–1932).

The new “Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago” had already been the result of the 1962 merger that created the LCA, joining Augustana Theological Seminary (Swedish Lutherans), Grand View Seminary (Danish Lutherans), and Suomi Theological Seminary (Finnish Lutherans) with the ULCA’s Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary at Maywood, IL, while planning and construction on the new site took place. Central Lutheran Theological Seminary would join them in Hyde Park in 1967. LSTC’s new Krauss Library had been established as the merger of those five seminaries’ libraries, and would proceed to develop its collections further.

The Jesuit School of Theology at Chicago would join the Lutherans in using LSTC’s new Hyde Park campus in 1970, integrating its collections with theirs. With McCormick’s additions in 1975, these nine libraries together would be known as the “Jesuit–Krauss–McCormick Library,” and informally as “JKM.”

However, after the Jesuit seminary closed in 1981, there were some governance challenges—including the question of whether institutions that had contributed their collections to JKM could reclaim those materials. The new JKM Library Trust and board were established in 1995, in an equal split between the remaining partners, and in 2004 the new trust agreed with the Chicago Province of the Society of Jesus to remove the word "Jesuit" and officially rename ourselves the "JKM Library," while retaining all contributed materials.

Many of our library resources still bear the marks of belonging to various members and stages of this rich history, and we are proud to carry their legacies forward.

Today, the JKM Library is administered under the JKM Library Trust through a board of directors comprised of the presidents, academic deans, two faculty members, and representatives from the boards of both the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and McCormick Theological Seminary, as well as the JKM Library director, and a treasurer (currently the McCormick VP for Finance).

When the University of Chicago acquired LSTC’s Hyde Park campus in 2023, both seminaries and the JKM Library moved to new locations. Today, you can find McCormick and LSTC together with the students, staff, and faculty of Catholic Theological Union in the newly-renamed Rev. Donald P. Senior, CP, Academic Center at 5416 S. Cornell Ave. After our downsizing and relocation nearby, almost half of JKM's former resources were also acquired by the University of Chicago Libraries, which holds them in offsite storage, accessible to their patrons and ours, through a separate agreement with McCormick and LSTC.

The JKM Library currently houses the approximately 34,000 books of its remaining collections in controlled storage in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, accessible by request and delivery to our local patrons, patrons at CARLI members in the I-Share network, patrons at the other ACTS seminaries in Chicago, and inter-library loan throughout the state of Illinois through the ILDS and RAILS systems. While our physical acquisitions are now limited, like many other libraries we have shifted heavily to electronic resources, and provide over 600,000 electronic books and a range of electronic jourmals and databases to serve the needs of our local patrons. And our library staff continues to offer curricular and research assistance to the faculties of both seminaries, as well as their students.