Library Closures

I can wax lyrical for ages about growing up and being taken to Southampton Central Library every week to take out my four books. I still remember the  heavy doors and wood panelling which immediately struck me dumb with respect for the contents within.

My sister and I would also go to the library during the summer holidays for childrens workshops on the no 5 bus and make totem poles out of toilet rolls and listen to stories. As I got older I graduated to the adult library and the even more exciting reference library where I would sit for hours looking up things and writing notes, on what I can’t remember…

I admit it’s been a long time since I went to a public library, I still read a lot but I buy books (when I can find a bookshop!) and use the internet for reference, but even so I have felt very uneasy about the proposed library closures by councils up and down the country.

Libraries are so much more about just borrowing books and looking up stuff, they are an important social hub for a community. When I was a teenager, on the dole and looking for work the library was somewhere I could go and read without spending money on coffee, books or heating.

My Mum goes every week, when she goes out of the house she doesn’t want to go to the pub and would feel uncomfortable spending much time in a café and in the winter she doesn’t want to sit on a park bench. The library is her refuge, a place where she can spend a few hours out of the house, there are millions like her judging from the protests up and down the land at the moment.

The coalition government don’t seem to see the worth of the library services and are happy to see them replaced with volunteer services, their ‘Big Society’ .

Ed Vaizey, the coalition minister for libraries, said last July. “There are all sorts of ways of configuring the big society,” he enthused, “The George and Dragon pub in North Yorkshire is now delivering a library service and a pint to the community in Hudswell. That sounds like a good partnership to me.” The library service he is referring to comprises of one shelf and sixty books, not really a like for like replacement for the vital social hub that a library provides.

This ignorance is astonishing, perhaps if the coalition had spent more time in libraries they would be better educated.