Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary’s library does a lot of good things. Sure, it is moderately frustrating that the only have two volumes of the Scandinavian Journal for OT Studies, and sure, they don’t have the journal De Septuaginta (which, as I am sure you know, would be a very helpful addition for my studies), but overall, it is a good theological library.

Yet, the one thing I still get frustrated with is their copiers. At Moody Bible, they enabled the copiers to scan to email…for the entire school. Why hasn’t this trickled down. Sure, some will say that forcing the student to pay 10/copy deters them from copying whole books. But honestly, who is going to sit in front of a copier for 3 hours meticulously copying a 300 page book. Fine, there are some of you thieves out there that would do this, but I still think that a well placed copier in view of library attendants prevents this.

Nevertheless, there is a solution. For those of you who have taken the plunge into Western over-indulgence and have purchased an iPhone or Droid with a good camera, then you can very quickly “photocopy” journal articles at no expense. I know that the 10 articles that I copied so far today has already saved me ~$20. Considering that I have to have ~150-200 sources for my annotated bibliography, I think that I will, overall, save $200 in copy fees. Hows that for being economical? I just paid for my phone.

Also, doing it this way comes with the added advantage of being able to read said articles anywhere you might carry your phone. How’s that for redeeming the time?