Lamu Fort Library, Community library in Lamu old town, Kenya.

Lamu Fort Library operates from a two-story stone fortress structure in the heart of the old town and houses thousands of books alongside digital resources. The building uses the original fort architecture to create reading and study spaces for the community.

The facility was founded in 1978 as a reference library for museum staff and later moved to the restored fort building in 1986 to serve the broader community. This relocation transformed it from a private collection into a public institution.

The research section keeps rare publications by Swahili writers, among them Professor Sheikh Nabhany, and Usam Ghaidan's books on Lamu conservation. The archive holds 19th- and 20th-century manuscripts, old photographs, newspapers and currencies. The Maktaba ya Sanaa art section, launched at the Lamu Art Festival in 2016 and opened in 2018, serves local and international artists.

The library occupies a room in the Lamu Fort Museum, which was a prison until 1984. It uses the Dewey Decimal Classification and a Browne Charging system with cards filed by return date. The research section holds theses and rare Swahili publications; part of the archive is digitised and accessible through UCLA Library Digital Collections.

The library still lends books through a Browne charging system: each borrower's card is filed in a tray by return date rather than by name. Its catalogue follows the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, and the roughly 10,000 items are arranged by Dewey Decimal Classification.