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The Public Libraries We Need

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What kind of public library do we need in our towns and cities? There is no shortage of thinking being applied to this question currently. Librarians tell us that we need public libraries that will serve as community hubs and attract visitors throughout the day. The Department for Culture, Media & Sport tells us that we need libraries to provide training and information to the socially excluded. Architects tell us that we need visibly striking library buildings that put the town or city back on the map, and which lead to the regeneration of the surrounding area. The common theme in all these visions is of a highly social and sociable public library, dedicated to re-establishing relations between neighbours, between service providers and service users, between voters and politicians, between the cultural sector and the business sector, and between the private life of man and his public life.

Should we buy into this vision? No. The relations that we once had, as communities, as voters, and as a society cannot be fixed as easily as some of the more enthusiastic public librarians imagine. In the meantime, though, as the vision of the sociable public library is relentlessly pursued, that most important of relationships – between writer and reader, via the printed word – is being inexorably undermined. And if this personal relationship is not allowed to grow, then what hope is there for reinvigorating the whole network of society-wide relationships?

Readers are having a hard time of it in public libraries today. Once the core users, they are now being squeezed out as libraries introduce computer equipment to attract internet users; training courses to attract job-seekers; health and legal surgeries to attract the community at large; and coffee bars to attract just about anyone. Above their heads the steel-and-glass architecture invites potential readers into the library to admire the spectacle, but does little to encourage them to engage in extended reading. The opportunities to find an important book (free of charge) and a quite carrel in which to read it are in decline. This is one aspect of privacy that is not protected.

Does all this really matter when so much knowledge and information can be found on the internet, which is freely available (although wholly inadequate) in all public libraries? Of course it matters. The internet may be a good source for finding out fairly up-to-date information and for referring to past works, but not for reading a book cover-to-cover; not for tracing the formation, transformation and reformation of an idea over time; and certainly not for forging a long-lasting and fruitful relationship with an author across the centuries.

Society has its problems, not least of which is the failure of many individuals to forge long-lasting and fruitful relationships with others. We must therefore demand of the custodians of public libraries, especially in busy city centres, that they provide a silent, book-filled space in which the writer-reader relationship can again blossom. Without giving this personal relationship a fighting chance, the wider public ties are liable to remain undone.

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London's an odd city in that

Submitted by Gillian McIver on Sun, 25/05/2008 - 01:59.

London's an odd city in that it doesn't have any central public library. Borough libraries (and I've used a few - and now give up on them) are almost always dreadful, with books being their utter lowest priority. There's no place to just read, and take a book home with you.

It's rotten to have to take out a membership to a private library, or to fill my house with bought books, when every day I pass all kinds of former libraries now turned inot "luxury" flats.

"nothing can release life from its obligation to be absolutely passionate"
(Lettrist International)

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That's a good point. The

Submitted by Josie Appleton on Sun, 25/05/2008 - 06:58.

That's a good point. The British Library is currently like a refugee camp, with no seats and a management that seems to spend its whole time writing health and safety notices!; the British Museum reading room was closed for an exhibition, and may never reopen. The new libaries - called Idea Stores - are almost deliberately designed to prevent reading, with seats next to walkways and so on (I looked at these in an article a couple of years ago). A society with no place for public reading is one that doesn't really value the pursuit of knowledge - we need new temples for reading, preferably with some books in!

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Just to add to that, even at

Submitted by Pete Smith on Thu, 29/05/2008 - 11:50.

Just to add to that, even at higher educational institutions libraries are increasingly being re-branded as ‘learning centres’ or ‘e-learning centres’, complete with a range of computers, appropriate new logo or text-speak name and possibly a café. Increased IT access for students is, of course, a wholly positive initiative but the re-branding exercise is specifically aimed at compromising books.

In the libraries discussion it is often argued that focusing on books and the printed word is off putting to students. Not surprisingly, many students have internalised this and see the idea of reading a whole book, or even a chapter of a book, as daunting. At the same time lecturers are increasingly dealing with cases of academic material being plagiarised from internet sources. A championing of books is needed in the very place you’d expect the pursuit of knowledge to be most valued.

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