The Library was established in 1980 and contains hundreds of books, manuals and pamphlets related to nuclear, biological and chemical warfare.
It all started with my Grandad's A.R.P. Handbook No.2, Handbook No.8 and his Air Raid Precautions cigarette card album. 24 years on, the library is still going strong.
The entire collection is not yet catalogued, but work is in progress.
I have tried to record as much information about each item as possible, but I've restricted myself to the most likely fields to allow positive identification because many military publications bear numerous reference numbers and codes, which it hasn't been feasible to catalogue in full.
Database Maintenance - October 2005
The Library database has undergone maintenance to improve efficiency and some slight changes will be noticeable to regular users. The main difference is that the term 'leaflet' has been replaced by 'pamphlet' for cataloguing; this was for several reasons, but mainly because it is hard to define what constitutes either item. Publication titles are also unhelpful; if a leaflet consists of one sheet of paper (a two-sided leaflet, or folded to produce multiple pages), then the 1939 Public Information Leaflets are leaflets, as they are mostly folded once to provide 4 pages. However, the 1938 Pamphlet on Garden Trenches is also a single sheet folded in half. Therefore, for the purposes of classifying items, a leaflet or booklet is now catalogued as a 'pamphlet'.
There is also a cross-purpose anomaly with classifying the type of publication against the nature of its content. A 'manual' is taken to consist of intructions or procedures, although some leaflets/booklets are also instructional, but are listed as pamphlets. A book is taken to be a work that is not a manual but, for example, historical in nature; again, some items classed as pamphlets may also be considered as books.