St Bride Library Closure: Update Roundup

On 31 July I pos­ted that the Lib­rary at St Bride’s was to close, but noth­ing had been pub­lished on the Found­a­tion’s website.

Around the same time Print­Week repor­ted that the Lib­rary was being ‘restruc­tured’.  The Asso­ci­ation of European Museums said –

Giv­en the cli­mate of uncer­tainty which has sur­roun­ded the future devel­op­ment of the St Bride Lib­rary in recent years, these announce­ments can only add to the anxi­ety felt by the many schol­ars, typo­graph­ers and design­ers world­wide for whom St Bride’s is one of the fore­most inter­na­tion­al resources in the field.

On 06 August the Found­a­tion made a state­ment to cla­ri­fy the pos­i­tion.  I’m rather select­ive here in my quote, but I find this remarkable –

Many of you will have heard wild stor­ies about the clos­ure of St Bride Lib­rary and the Work­shop. I am also aware that some people are under the impres­sion that the whole Found­a­tion is clos­ing without fur­ther ado and that everything will be sold or giv­en away and that will be the end of the story.

This is simply not true.

Dis­ap­point­ingly, the wild­est story — that the lib­rary and work­shops will cease — is true.