An early goal of the Espy Foundation was to establish and maintain a library in Oysterville to house Willard Espy's personal collection of reference books and his own works, totaling some 700 volumes. Work began on the library in the fall of 1999, and the small building was dedicated in April 2000. The intimate and cozy facility provides an inspiring work space for writers and artists in the Residency Program.

The collection consists largely of books on the lighter side of language: word-play

and riddles, anagrams, puns and palindromes, tongue-twisters, slang, curious word origins, limericks, and collections of light verse. Its many reference volumes range from general to specialized dictionaries, thesauruses, quotation anthologies, and readers' and writers' references. The Library also includes a growing shelf of Southwest Washington history.

The Library has been enormously enriched by writer Paul Dickson, who has donated 2,400 volumes devoted primarily to American English. Specialized collections have also been donated by Theodor Shuchat and Laurence Urdang, founder of Verbatim, The Language Quarterly.  Mr. Dickson believes that the Espy Library could become a major source for books on colloquial English usage and American humorous language, noting that the holdings of the Library of Congress in the area of "the rougher language" (the jargon and humor of the G.I., the logging camp or prison yard, for example) are relatively limited.  There is a similar and significant collection at the University of Missouri, but it consists of 10,000 slips of paper, which although a treasure trove for researchers, is cumbersome to use. 

To celebrate the opening of the Library, Merriam-Webster donated a comprehensive set of its language related titles, nearly 50 volumes in print and on CD-ROM.  In addition, copies of all books published by the University of Washington Press were donated by James Townsend in memory of the late Don Ellegood, founding Espy Trustee and Director of the University of Washington Press.

Due to current space restrictions, Mr. Dickson’s collection and the collections donated by Theodor Schuchat, James Townsend and Laurence Urdang remain in storage.  Espy’s new facilities will provide space for all 4,000 books, with room to hold up to 10,000 volumes.