The response in the Guardian to the open letter to the Hulture Minister – organised by Alan Gibbons – back in early December almost came as a shock. Quite a few people were saying they don’t like libraries. They were suggesting they were unnecessary.
I suppose it’s refreshing that not everyone nods wisely, saying that of course they agree with the campaign. Though if you read all the comments it’s clear that there is a lot of support for our libraries. And the comments show that we are now fighting for something that is important. Once lost it won’t come back.
To kick off a few blog posts about libraries I’ll tell you about my first one, because at the moment I can’t get to my most recent library. And that’s not the library’s fault. (Well, it is in a way, because if it was next door to me it would be so easy to get there.) I’ll try to pop in and take a photo for a later post about it. Unless photography isn’t allowed. You never know these days.
Several authors have blogged about their own libraries from childhood onwards. I can’t match their fervour, but I did like my library. So much so, that I was seriously annoyed when they built a new and even better replacement a few years ago.
Mother-of-witch took me to get a library card when I was six, which was officially too early but they allowed it as I could read. From then on I went into town on my own for the next six years, walking to begin with and then cycling. I didn’t read every book in that library, but at times it felt like it.
We moved to another town when I was twelve, but the children’s department in the new library had little to offer that I hadn’t already read, so I took myself off downstairs to the adults, and they said that if I was going to keep coming down there I might as well have an adult library card.
Absolutely.
Some years on I was back in my original library, finding it more than useful for my university reading list. It wasn’t a university town then, but it still had the books, so with barely any competition for them they ‘were all mine’. More or less.
And that’s really why we need libraries. We can’t always go out and buy books.
My library system is great–except for the fact that it doesn’t have many global mysteries, or else it takes forever for it to buy one copy, and sometimes that one isn’t circulated. Aside from that, it has so many books, dvds and cds.
I just found dvds of movies and tv series I didn’t even know existed–Inspector Maigret, Brother Cadfael, for example.
I got my first library card at three, was the youngest ever at that branch.
I just love libraries, and often visit branches in different parts of my city when I have an appointment. And I always feel like I’m entering a bakery when I walk into a new to me branch to see what they carry, what’s new.
Libraries to me are sacrosanct, and are necessary from cradle to grave.
Children use them, read, do homework, etc. I often see children so happily checking out a pile of books at the front desk.
Young children of friends used to wake them up at 6 a.m. to read their library books to them, and they’d walk around carrying them all day, so happy.
It’s just criminal to me to close libraries, curtail programs, cut staff.
They’re even so much more than only the materials. They’re community centers for retired and unemployed people, and places for them to go. They have programs with authors speaking and reading for children…so much. It really is outrageous to be confronted by this.
But then again, health care is on the chopping block, and so is public education in my state, and across the country and in Europe, too.
I was wondering what the Swedish government’s (national and local) policy is towards libraries?
I honestly don’t know, Celia. I suffer from the Swedish view that such things shouldn’t even be under discussion. I have asked The New Librarian for some inside information, so we’ll see.
Celia – this is what The New Librarian has to say:
‘Libraries are currently a non-issue in politics in Sweden. There is always the risk of closing some, because local councils always have bad finances now and then. More recently some libraries have wanted to be franchised or made into (limited) companies or similar. There has never been much debate about it outside library circles, though.
At the moment Nacka library is in danger of privatisation, so we’ll have to see what happens there. If it happens the debate might wake up. Every now and then some politician wants to have a fee for loans, but it’s never amounted to much. The Alliance (group of parties) talked about fees for the 2006 elections, but decided against.
So you can say that the government does nothing and keeps quite about the libraries.’