SAVE OUR LIBRARIES

I’m taking my youngest child to the local library in a minute so that he can do some revision for a history and geography test. Not because we need to find the answers in books, but because he enjoys the experience of sitting in a quiet room with other people – and he gets my full attention instead of a mad woman juggling 10 different jobs at home. We don’t use the library regularly as a family – I suppose I used to go when my kids were very young to listen to stories so that I could sneak outside for a fag – can’t quite remember and when I’m in my “I must write a novel immediately” mode I always go to the library in an attempt to breath in important and literary fumes in the hope that they’re catching.

The government can’t just get rid of our local libraries. That would be very sad. I accept that they don’t get used in the same way that they used to anymore thanks to the internet and cheaper books and of course the e-books read on a Kindle, but surely they are one of the last places where communities come together to borrow, share and then return? Instead of our modern “buy and sell” mentality.

I told my daughter the other day how lucky she was to be able to access all the information she required at the press of a button – “I used to have to go to the library or read the Encyclopedia Britannica’s” I told her. “God”, she said “your life SUCKED”.

Did it?

I think libraries should still have an important place in society and that we should preserve them – not as old relics of a bygone era – but as a key public service in our busy lives that allows a little piece of calm and quiet contemplation with other people – they just may need to be cleverer about how to attract the younger generation.