ANYONE WHO'S HEARD Ethel Baker and Linda Conner speak knows their reputation for straight talk, served up with a dose of good humor. And the two women gave a candid assessment of the state of Christian Science Reading Rooms at a talk to Mother Church employees in April. Both inspirational and informative, the talk shed light on the 50 Reading Room workshops the pair gave in seven countries during the past three years, and what they learned from them.
For context, the second largest Christian bookstore chain in the United States, which has 300 outlets, is open a total of one million hours a year. The 1,500 Christian Science Reading Rooms worldwide (1,200 in the US) are open 1.3 million hours a year, with 25 percent open only five hours a week or less. "Many Reading Rooms are not content with their progress and their effect on their communities and are making changes," Ms. Baker said. "For all of the challenges," she added, "Reading Rooms are out there, even if they're not open as much as they'd like to be. ... People may not know what goes on in those rooms, but they know they exist."
A "Christian Science Reading Room" sign above a building on Main Street does bring name recognition, but its existence is not alone a recipe for success. Reading room librarians, staff, and branch church memberships care deeply about being a resource for healing, inspiration, and products that matter profoundly to humanity's well-being. Many are also aware that the image of Reading Rooms as throwbacks to a distant era persists, and isn't always simply a matter of perception. CNN contributor Bob Greene put it this way in a recent online article: "For those of us who aren't members of the Christian Science faith, it's as if the reading rooms have been hiding in plain sight all our lives, a permanent part of the nation's cityscapes. They're always there, usually in American downtowns—you see one of the storefronts, and if you squint, it can feel a little like 1955" (CNN.com, "Commentary: Where ink on paper is missed," April 19, 2009).
