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The EAPI Library
The East Asian Pastoral Institute library began with the new EAPI building, completed in 1967. It took over many of the books gathered together by Fr. Johannes Hofinger, S.J. in his Institute of Mission Apologetics in Mandaluyong, a suburb of Manila, after all the Jesuit Fathers were expelled from China by the Communists in the years 1950‑1951.
Because many Jesuits there were Austrian, many of the books were in the German language. The classification of the books was by a homemade system of numbers.
In 1967 Fr. Francis X. Clark, S.J. was added to the EAPI staff and appointed librarian, a post he kept for almost seventeen years. Immediately he began to install the Library of Congress classification system, to conform to all the other libraries on the Ateneo de Manila University campus.
To serve the EAPI curriculum, professors and participants, who come from practically all the countries of Asia and the Pacific and are normally interested in mission, culture, interreligious dialogue, liturgy, theology and history, books are purchased in these and cognate fields. In addition, every effort is made to acquire the leading theological periodicals of all Asia, and also from Europe and North America, on the above topics, with the limits imposed by the yearly budget. By the year 2000, the total number of books reached about 30,000; they are constantly imcreasing.
From the beginning, the shelves were arranged from wall to wall. As the shelves filled up, a shift was made to a longitudinal arrangement; this permitted space for many more books until today. I allows aslo reading tables for visitors. The library books were computerized in the year 2001, and the catalogue can be consulted from the terminals withing the library and from Internet.