"We're just a library, standing in front of a patron... asking you to love us."

For most of the year, Library Society fundraising is like a gawky and awkward Hugh Grant in a Richard Curtis movie... We quietly fumble about in the sidelights, all the while silently hoping you'll notice us for just long enough to see that we're madly in love with you. We're really quite charming, you see, and not at all anti-social; just rather shy, and awkward amongst pretty strangers.

Then comes the Annual Appeal Campaign (starting today)! Now we become climax/falling action Hugh Grant: it's almost the end of the movie, and we're racing across London in a friend's car, frantically trying to find you before you take off back to America, no longer moved by infatuation but earnestly longing for a deep, lasting relationship.

And what better way to define "deep, lasting relationship" than in monetary terms? Your gifts sustain our programmes, allow new accessions, provide for repairs and improvements. The year-round services the Library provides are possible because of this period Annual Appeal giving. In the past we have never failed to be both very impressed and deeply humbled by giving of our patrons, and we hope that generosity is expressed in the Appeal once again this year.



Also, if anyone has a Chagall they would like to donate, we would be more than happy to have it...





Because happiness isn't happiness without a violin-playing goat.