By June 1600 the hall was fitted out with oak bookcases with integral reading desks. On 8 November 1602, the library was inaugurated with a collection of over 2,000 volumes. By 1605, when the first published catalogue of the collection appeared, it had 5,600 volumes; fifteen years later the collection had quadrupled in size, to 23,000.

Andrew Pettegree, Arthur der Weduwen, The Library- A Fragile Hist…, loc. 319