Living with change : life at Latimer Library

Abstract

The idea for Latimer Library came out of a desire by members of the Evangelical Churchmen's Fellowship to create a centre for Biblical research and study. Rev. Canon W. A. Orange provided the original collection and a group of 18-19 men from the Fellowship set up a Foundation Trust to provide funds the buildings. These founders and their ongoing work impacted on the organisational and social history of the library. The research examines the development of their aims, and those for the library, the developing and changing management and functions of the library, the effect of changes in church and society affecting the library, and the developments and changes in potential "partners" for the library. This includes background to the Fellowship, and the period 1962 - 2001, in which the library came to fruition. Oral interviews and email correspondence coupled with four decades of Fellowship minutes, reports, and correspondence form the basis of Latimer Library's history. This was supplemented by some secondary sources giving background to the wider issues influencing events and functions the Fellowship undertook. Difficulties in expertise, communication, and funding hindered the development of the library throughout its life but in end a number of other factors influenced the decision to pass the library into Bible College's hands. It is evident that the nature of the original collection will change with time, but that without this change, the library's life was in the balance. With BCNZ, it will be kept alive and be accessible to students and in some way, the public. Without the original vision and hard work of each warden and its many volunteers, the collection may never have reached this era, perhaps like many past collections it may instead have become dispersed and lost