Slindewater en Berner
Church warden Conrad Slindewater suggested the idea of building a new library that was not exclusively intended for the clergy. Together with Herman Berner, he collected ideas for its construction and furnishing. Slindewater died in 1559. Berner worked out the plans further with his new colleague Evert van der Capellen.
Why a public reading room?
Thanks to his preserved notebook, we know Slindewater’s main arguments for wanting to build a public reading room: Making knowledge available to a wide audience would benefit the whole town and studying ‘good’ books would strengthen readers in their Christian faith and (hopefully) cure them of any errors.
Click here for the translation by Jan Frings and Jos Hartman (in Dutch).
Architectural style
To collect ideas for the construction and furnishing of the new library Slindewater and Berner visited several monastic libraries in Zutphen. With these examples in mind Slindewater made a sketch for the interior. Both the building itself and the interior still have a medieval character.
Disasters / threats
Between 1572 and 1591, the Librije, as well as the other monastic libraries in Zutphen, suffered from looting by Spanish and State troops. Because the city finally switched to Protestantism after 1591, the character of the library changed. Many books must have disappeared during this period; a few books from disbanded monasteries ended up in the Librije.
With librarian Meinsma at the end of the nineteenth century, a long period of neglect came to an end.
Restoration
In 1982 the restoration of the books started. This project, which was carried out in close consultation with the KB, National Library of the Netherlands, was completed in 1999. Since then all books are checked annually by a curator.
A new catalog was compiled and was published in 2008. The digital version was launched in 2019.
More information
For more information see Chapter 3.2 History of Catalogus Librije Zutphen. Click here.