It’s late, I know. My blogging has fallen off in recent weeks and I can only blame the day job workload and a stinking cold. But a quick few words because it’s National Libraries Day.
My first library was a bus. A mobile library that came to the close where I lived. I on’t remember it well, though it may have been an odd blue colour and I do remember wondering how the books stayed on the shelves, as you do.
But then they built a new library, brand spanking new, down the road from my house. I went to the opening with my mum, got out loads of books and refused to talk to local radio about how glad I was that the library was there.
From that day I went a lot. After school, on Saturday mornings while my dad watched Football Focus, after school again, after school and Saturday mornings. For years. I must have read so many books there. I remember one, a YA dystopian fable called The Bumblebee Flies Anyway by Robert Cormier, I forget what it was about except that I was hooked and I got so cross at my dad who laughed at the title, thinking it wasn’t tackling enormous issues of life-threatening import. I remember being the latest in a long line of teenage girls asking for their copy of Forever by Judy Blume, just as the librarians had taken it out the back to try and mend its crumbling spine and loose pages from so much reading and re-reading.
My school had a library too. More books to read. And then there were university libraries. I found them impossible to study in, instead always looking around, taking in the titles and the grafitti on the tables. Photocopy and borrow the books to read elsewhere, that was my strategy. This is as true today as it was then – I can’t work well in libraries. When I was studying for my post-graduate diploma I had a visitor’s pass to Nottingham Trent University’s library. They only let you have access for a few days per year; you were essentially a non-paying student using their resources, and you couldn’t borrow anything. I had to get my research done in those few days. It was incredibly difficult and I only managed it by constantly playing The cave Singers two albums over and over again on my ipod.
Nowadays my library visits are mainly with my daughter who, at three, is already a big fan of the library. It was one of the first places to make us feel welcome as a mother and daughter combo, offering tots time singing sessions and signing her up for a library card before she was six months old.
I am incredibly lucky in living somewhere that the local Council recognises the importance of libraries, has been funding them and is working hard to improve literacy rates in children. Not everyone is so lucky. Not everyone realises what they are losing. Fight to keep them. They are a lifeline to so many.
Susan E Barsby 