fishinglibrary

As the Fishing Museum was originally conceived, it would have had a permanent headquarters in a specially provided building, complete with a display area, restaurant, a conservation department and a library. Of these, the restaurant would have been the most important, because little can be achieved in this life without a reliable supply of decent espresso. As it is, to some extents and purposes, the Internet has led many to question the requirement for a physical museum, although the need to conserve books - and in particular, magazines - still exists.

One of the dreams of every committee that has sat down to plan an angling museum has been to make texts available over the web in a searchable format. This has already been done with many books, thanks in particular to a grant from Microsoft,and we present some of these works here, where they may be freely downloaded.

However, there is a pressing need to preserve and make available magazines like the Fishing Gazette and Land & Water to a wider readership, as many copies of these journals are deteriorating fast and are held in private collections that have limited access and limited ability to preserve copies for future generations.

At the minute our library is in a bit of a mess, with the books just stuck in anywhere they can go, but if Jon or I experience an outbreak of organisation, we will fix it and make it alphabetical and all. My advice is not to hold your breath on this one.

These books can be downloaded by clicking either on the image of the book itself, or the title to the left. Depending on which browser you favour, the pdf file will most likely open in the browser itself and then you will be able to save the book to the desktop and read it at leisure.