The earliest non-temple or palace library known to historians, dates from 1200 BC at Ugarit. The first publicly accessible library in the UK is reputed to have been founded in Grantham in 1598. Our Walthamstow Library, formerly the Central Library, is coming up for its centenary next year. It nearly burned down in 1982, with the loss of the Russian collection, but survived at the top of our High Street nonetheless. It underwent a refurbishment reputed to have cost £3.5million a couple of years ago, blending elements of the old Edwardian edifice with architecture which would do credit to the Mall which faces it across the Town Square, and the new bus station in all its spanking elegance to the rear.

The building has its detractors, particularly people who have complained about squeaky floors, a lack of books and a large tank of fish near the entrance. To these, I must point out that entrance area is bright and welcoming, if slightly over-heated for an atrium housing an exhibition on the topic of energy efficiency. (This does include a rather bizarrely misleading poster for what is supposed to be a place of learning with the panicky screaming headline "Warning CO2". CO2 is harmless to humans.)

Entry is to the right of what was, on my visit today, an unmanned desk. As are all library entrances these days, I expect, this one was laden with various brochures pursuing the local authority's line on topics such as Safer Neighbourhoods, Housing and rent arrears. It also had a hilariously inept leaflet called 'What's on and Where, Waltham Forest'.

I collected one. This very glossy sheet of thick, expensively folded paper is produced by a body called 'ExCel London'. It told me what the highlights of my April in Walthamstow will be: the London Marathon, (miles away), a performance of Bugsy Malone in Edmonton, (also miles away), an Abba Tribute Night in Woodford (£29.50 at the County Hotel) and a re-enactment by the Napoleonic Association at Waltham Abbey (Miles away). I wonder why Waltham Forest College and Waltham Forest Adoption Services paid good public money to advertise in this?

Still, it is in the nature of the thirst for knowledge that libraries are there to both quench and engender, that unpalatable truths will be come across, and I thank the library for this insight into just how parlous is the state of health of the systems of governance that operate in this borough.

But I digress. This is a look at the library, not poor governance. Walking in through the short corridor, I came upon the famous fish tank. I have previously heard at least one Walthamstonian shouting across the street at his councilor about this tank. Apparently, with one section of the public, the idea is a dud. I have to say I had a good look at the offending tank and decided that I liked it. Its paid for, so it should stay. Psychologists will tell you that tropical fish are calming, and given the levels of aggression which we are hoping the public will leave behind them having crossed the Town Square, anything that can achieve that is OK by me. To the left of the tank, just on the other side of a security scanner, are the first of the books. I do not stop to peruse them but study the sign ahead for an idea of the layout. Reference, non-fiction and computers are to the left, fiction, children's books and the audio-visual section straight on.

I turn to the left, along a corridor of dark laminate veneer, familiar to many a customer of the cheaper boutiques that populate the High Street. Suddenly, there is a beautiful real wooden staircase, halfway up which is a magnificent stained glass window. A survivor of the fire and the original improving impulse of our Edwardian forbears. Two words stand out at the centre of the window: Wisdom and Knowledge. Our forebears knew these were not one and the same thing - that both must be striven for. And where to look for these qualities? The window helpfully points the way: Milton, Scott, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Bacon. Beneath this inspiring window, the good burghers of Walthamstow installed a set of faux historical 'heraldements' in a pastiche of the Morris Style, as out of date in 1926, (when Miss C. Demain Saunders JP donated them), as the pastiche Gothic which Morris had himself drawn upon as an influence the century before.

At the top of the stairs are more historical whimsies installed by local worthies all too aware in 1909 of how little real history there was in Walthamstow (They did not then see how inspiring the local production of the first motor car or the birth of the film industry might later have been as a theme). So there are a set of rather silly genealogies linking worthies from in or around Walthamstow to the Houses of Beauchamp and Neville, De Roos, Maynary, the Carolingians, the Vikings, and, my particular favourite, Joffre the Hairy.

Turning left at the tops of the landing after admiring the excellent carved woodwork of the stairs, I enter the reference library. There are people who think there is something wrong with this room. I can see nothing wrong with it. There are two shelves of reference books, three shelves of non-fiction, plenty of upholstered library chairs, two large tables accommodating as many local scholars as would fit and two library staff on hand to help with any requests. What I can hear is near silence, except for the cross-channel ferry engine room hum of the air-conditioning in the background. The room is spacious. The air is dry and warm. The room is agreeably bright due to the wonderful windows, white tastefully embellished vaulted ceiling and the modern hanging lights. The reference room was doing exactly what I expect such a room to do in a library, and doing it well.

The computer room, which is downstairs, is basically a long room with a table down its length. There are twenty stations in this room, all being used when i looked in, quietly and intently. At a small side table were a couple of young men working quietly together with a pair of laptops.

I enter another room: more non fiction. Seven double sided shelves of history, cooking, travel, hobbies and the arts. One whole side of a shelf with books in Polish, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Hindi, Turkish, Chinese and Arabic, though interestingly in view of what was lost in the fire, and the current arrival of Russian Speakers to the borough, still no Russian texts. All the tables and chairs were being used. There was no talking.

So on into the fiction section. This was area with most people, and there was, in contrast to the other rooms, a fair bit of talking, but public decorum was still the order of the day. Noise did not seem to be disturbing the people at the computers which were spread out along the sides of the room. The real noise was visual: I was faced with 8 large double sided shelves in orange. The seats for readers are purple. This colour scheme will date, if it doesn't send the library staff round the bend before then.

I also took in the excellent green themed children's area and peered into the audio-visual room, not something I have been interested in since so much material has been on-line. This completed a visual inspection of the library.

But a library is not a thing of beauty alone. It has a job to do. In an age when according to Dan Fesperman, author of The Prisoner of Guantanamo and The Amateur Spy, "Every culture in the world is just one good shove away from the precipice of barbarism," libraries are where the knowledge and wisdom of the world rests awhile on its never-ending journey through time and space to speak to present and future generations. Its where Milton, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Bacon and Scott congregate on the shelves to shake their gentle heads at man's folly. Not that very many people read Scott any more.

So what should they read? I have my own opinions, but it may be a little unfair to expect my tastes to be present on the shelves. How to resolve this problem of seeming like another hyper-critic of the library service simply because some book I wanted to read was not available. According to the Waltham Forest Guardian almost a quarter of a million books have gone missing from Waltham Forest libraries amid claims, substantiated by ex-library staff, that they have been burned or pulped. I don't want to be unfair. How can I expect them to preempt my every whim by saving a book I want to read?

If it isn't in, they can, as they say, get it on order. So how to test whether the place works in a manner that would be fair to the council? I was pondering this when the shelves spoke to me. Rather, the photographic embellishments following the refurbishments gave me the answer. At the end of the shelves are some inspiring photographs of readers. The yellow non fiction shelves have a dread-locked woman reading Oscar Wilde's Happy Prince. The Blue Reference shelves have two men (who are dressed like the council bin-men who are alleged to have helped pulp all those books), one apparently engrossed in a book about football, and the other smiling to himself at the thought of being immortalised locally holding a copy of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. The orange fiction shelves, for a reason known only to the designer, has a middle aged white lady reading a book entitled 'Fifty Great Curries of India' by Camelia Panjabi.

I wouldn't ask if the library had enough books. A library can never have enough books. I would ask if it had these books. If I asked for them, how could the library staff help me out? I chose my moment, a moment when I thought I could take up a little of the kind looking lady's time without inconveniencing any other users. The first book I asked for, feigning ignorance, was the 'The Little Prince', by Oscar Wilde. (I had checked the shelves, and the only Wilde in the whole library was the Wordsworth edition (the very cheap one stocked at Books Ink) of Three Plays. The librarian was very kind, letting me know she thought the Little Prince was possibly by someone else. Maybe I wanted 'The Happy Prince'? I warmed to her immediately, though we were both disappointed to learn that the computer said the book was still on the shelf. It was just my eyes that told me it wasn't. The next book was the Victor Hugo. We presumed it would have to be in English, as there is no stock of French books in the library. This was out on loan, due back in April. Someone local is still reading improving classics it seems, no matter they are ones ruined for me by Lloyd-Weber. The last throw of the dice was 'Fifty Great Curries of India'. I asked for 'Curries of India'. The computer corrected me. And then said I couldn't have it. It is kept in Leyton, and is out on loan.

One further thought on the Library. At the head of the page of the European Commission’s official website, the Walthamtsow Library is listed as a source to contact for advice on Governance. I am inclined to ask whether a Waltham Forest library service that can lose or destroy some 60% of its stock in a two year period and close down a whole library at St James Street without proper public consultation or consent, would really be the best place to go for such advice?

In summary, of three books inadvertently recommended by the library's designer, none were to be had. One had gone astray, but two are performing their legitimate functions as library books. From the library's point of view, two out of three may not be bad. But as a quest for specific knowledge (had it been a real one), it would have left me very disappointed. The building was great. I could see it was being used to full capacity and some of the staff were doing their best in the circumstances. I'll just have to go down to Oxfam to get something to read.