Saffron Walden Town Library

ancient town naturally attract both newcomers keen to establish roots and long-settled families drawn to the story of their home acres.

Two groups of new readers deserve special mention - students from schools, and from the Open University. The Town Library provides a resource for primary-school children learning about their community as part of the national curriculum, while Open University students, lacking their own university library within reach, are often finding material they need on shelves in Saffron Walden. This extension of the library's constituency is likely to grow in future.

For years the Library has faced pressure on space, for books, readers and staff. At the moment this guide is being written, however, the installing of rolling book-stacks has just made possible more compact storage and a larger area for study. This advance, funded by many local organisations, greatly reduces the Library's problems, and probably defers the provision of more accommodation for twenty years. Another improvement which has long been desired by readers is the addition of the SWLSI stock to the Essex Libraries' on-line

catalogue. This venture is being supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Pilgrim Trust, and was started in September 2003.

But the Saffron Walden Town Library is so great a treasure that guarding the original collection is bound to be a heavy charge. It is like a microcosm of one of the world's great libraries, in London, Paris or Washington, rather than a commonplace local reference library. It is a boon to readers in the neighbourhood and beyond, attracted by its Victorian ambience and the varied riches on its shelves. Few collections as subtle as the Saffron Walden Town Library exist anywhere, so diverse in its beautiful volumes and so poignantly uniting modern expertise with an historic civic culture. To sit in its Reading Room and listen to the stately tick of its venerable clock, and at the same time to the rapid whisper of computers, is to be reminded that it has prospered by conquering each new challenge while retaining its past. We should be confident that it will do so in future.

Peter Searby, 2004.