At lunchtime today I hurried out of my office and made my way to see Wycombe’s new £5.6m Library. When I walked in the door there were no books to be seen just some lifts and a door leading to a small and poky stair case making me feel that I was in a car park rather than in a state of the art Library. I decided to take the stairs and after a short climb arrived at the Mezzanine floor on which there was a display on woodworking in Wycombe.

The items on display included a Windsor chair, some woodworking tools and a stuffed squirrel in a glass case. The display did not include any modern multimedia learning aids whatsoever and quite honestly I could have put on a better and more educational display from the items in my garden shed. Why didn’t they have a video running showing how a Windsor chair is made? Why wasn’t there a Windsor chair for the visitors to sit on and see how comfortable it is?

I left and went up more stairs to the first floor where the books were. Here I asked directions to the books on Wycombe’s history only to be told they were on the top floor so off I went up more poky stairs and eventually found the local interest section. On the top floor they also have a large number of computers for readers to browse the internet with although you have to pay to use these.

It would appear that the library has been used to fill in an odd piece of land left over in the complex and the design appears to be based on a multi-storey car park complete with lifts and stairs to all levels. In the old library the Children’s books were on the ground floor so prams could easily be pushed in. Now everyone has to queue for a lift or (if the lifts are broken) walk up the stairs. A vast sum of money was spent building the new library yet the land purchased was not big enough to have at least some of the books at ground level.

The library is not open on a Monday which mystifies me as people want to learn all week however the books inside are excellent and I spent most of my lunch break reading through the books on old Wycombe and reminiscing but sadly the failure to have easy and quick access makes the building a terrible let down and not worthy of a town of Wycombe’s status.

It should have been a temple to learning but the readers have to hang around waiting for a lift or face climbing the 87 steps in a poky staircase to get to reference books on the top floor. For £5.6m we should have been given something far better than this. The old Library had its faults but in my opinion it was far superior to the new one.

Have you been to the new library? If so what do you think to it?