With a gift from merchant and philanthropist Silas Bronson to his hometown of Waterbury and with the direction of internationally renowned bibliographer William Frederick Poole, the Library Board of Agents established the Silas Bronson Library, the City's library, in 1868. Today that library houses a collection of 240,000 carefully selected titles, 60 computer workstations, state and federal government documents depositories, and the most experienced staff in a quarter of Connecticut. The current building, with some 53,000 square feet of space, dates from 1963 and 1968.
Bronson's services are divided into circulation, children's information, technical and adult information services. These services address the information needs of residents of all ages with a variety of reference, recreational, and general print and digital materials. With capital and collection resources of over twenty-two million dollars Bronson is the largest and finest public information agency in the western/northwestern part of the state. The objectives of the library's 1992 long-range plan "A Vision into the 21st Century" prepared by HBW Associates of Dallas, Texas, are summarized in 2020 Vision, the Library Board's 20-year plan for service improvements:
Renovation of the main library with a 20,000 square foot addition
Addition of a 100-car parking garage at the main library
Creation of a full service 20,000 square foot popular library branch
Increasing the city budget to meet state minimum book collection and information technology standards
Expanding the Bunker Hill Library to 10,000 square feet
Doubling the amount of the library endowment to meet future capital expenses.
These objectives have been adopted so that the Library Board and staff may continue to fulfill Bronson's 135 year old mission in the new Millennium.
Since its inception in 1868, the library's mission has been to promote education, to dispense general information and to make a positive contribution to the moral and cultural heritage of the people of Waterbury. With a federal grant of $2,125,000 the Library is now being transformed into a totally integrated information technology center to train its various constituencies, including: children, business, consumers, community organizations, government employees, students, seniors, the disabled, the impecunious and numbers of various ethnic communities, in the latest information technologies and thereafter to make those technologies available to them for their lifelong education.
