• Why we love a library
THESE ENDURING PUBLIC SPACES ARE SO MUCH MORE THAN A ROOMFUL OF BOOKS. FROM THE MINUTIAE OF MICROFICHE TO THE MAJESTY OF THEIR BUILDINGS, JULIAN OWEN EXPLORES THEIR APPEAL
To my lasting fortune, I grew up in a very special place. Because, while it might only have been a modestly sized West Country market town, it contained a magical building where the entire world opened up. Just as Mr Benn had a costume shop at the top of Festive Road, so we had a library at the bottom of Wicker Hill. You wouldn’t know it from the austere Victorian facade, but to climb its grand staircase was to enter a place where one week you might find yourself flying with Willard Price to visit long-lost tribes of the Amazon, the next peering through mist trying to locate the Famous Five on Mystery Moor, and so on and thrillingly on.
There were, I estimated, a gazillion titles nestled upon the shelves. Though no adult ever spoke of it, I knew books were nervous creatures. For one thing, it was apparent they were fearful of daylight or fresh air, stored as they were on skyscraping dark wooden bookshelves, in a high vaulted room ‘illuminated’ by the occasional 40-watt bulb. The bigger giveaway was that even so much as hinting at making a noise would draw a terse “Shhh!” from library staff, clearly uneasy that at any moment a startled Faber or skittish Penguin could trigger a stampede, leaving the shelves deserted.
Said staff didn’t have to be precariously leaning from the top of a vertiginous wheel-along stepladder, tentatively re-shelving large print Barbara Cartlands, to prove they worked there. Uniforms did that. For the women, white round-collar blouses, buttoned up to the border of sentience and asphyxiation, while men wore green check-print suit jackets over mustard pullovers and were required to speak with soft Edinburgh accents. In those days, proof of age was a bigger deal in the library than it was in the pub; no job
application would be considered without evidence of a telegram from the Queen. After all, you wouldn’t wish to entrust something as hallowed as the Borrowing a Book Ceremony to some octogenarian whippersnapper. This lengthy rite involved slips of paper, voluminous filing cabinets and, climactically, the thud of a stamp as suited to branding cattle as dating book returns.
Libraries didn’t just conduct their own rituals, they facilitated other people’s. Every July, Dad’s factory shutdown heralded a fortnight’s camping holiday. The cue for Mum to a) purchase our combined bodyweight in corned beef, and b) borrow a yellowing cassette of Steeleye Span’s Greatest Hits from the library. Because without that we wouldn’t be able to sing ‘All Around My Hat’ in the car, and without that it wouldn’t feel like a holiday at all.
Later the library became a snooker hall; today – inevitably – flats. Its successor was recently bulldozed, too. The town’s third generation library is a swanky glass affair, thoroughly fit for the 21st century. Because while many have gone, and many more are under threat, libraries’ appeal abides.
MEET THE ANCESTORS
Short of plotting a path to fame and catching the eye of the appropriate TV producer, the best placed person to help comprehensively trace your family history is your local librarian. Sure, you can begin your quest online, but it’s the library that holds historical property deeds, offering potential glimpses into ancestral social circles and lifestyle or, less happily, Poor Law and workhouse records. Then you’ve got your coroner’s inquests, census records, electoral register, burial tracing, photograph collections, local newspapers on microfiche and, of course, births, marriages and deaths. And if you really are wedded to life online, there’s access to subscription only websites and free wifi.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
No surprise that England’s first unconditionally free public library opened
in 1850 in Salford, home of the movement for universal suffrage; a democracy without all-inclusive access to knowledge isn’t really a democracy at all. The same applies today. Libraries ensure that we can all get online (even if some librarians might care to point out that 88% of books are unavailable on the web). The National Literacy Trust says libraries’ ongoing value is evidenced by the fact that children who use them are twice as likely to read well, and gain additional benefits from the social experience. Little wonder demand remains high. Despite the loss of more than 400 public and 140 mobile libraries in recent years, government figures released in September revealed that 34% of adults had used a library in the past 12 months. Find out more about saving libraries at librarycampaign.com.
UNLIKELY LIBRARIES
Once upon a time, not so long ago, many branches of Boots the Chemist housed libraries. We’re not talking small scale, either – during the Second World War, Boots claimed more than 1 million subscribers and bought books at the rate of 1,250,000 a year. They weren’t alone. WHSmith did similar, while pretty much every newsagent in the guest house area of seaside towns such as Margate had a subscription library. Happily, the spirit of the unlikely library lives on. In 2009, when the mobile library stopped visiting the Somerset village of Westbury-sub-Mendip, local resident Janet Fisher helped to save its similarly threatened phone box by suggesting it become a mini-library. And so it remains today, open 24/7, lit at night, and inspiration to subsequent takeovers around the country. »
“The thud of the library stamp… as suited to branding cattle as dating book returns”
ARCHITECTURAL GEMS
The original Liverpool Central Library, built in 1860, was a confusingly labyrinthine affair. Following the biggest public library project in Europe, it reopened in 2013 as a spectacularly dome-topped, capacious crisscross of stairs and escalators. It was, said local author, Frank Cottrell Boyce, like going to meet your gran and finding she’s “turned into Beyoncé”. Equally fortunate in having access to a proper-job jewel of a building are the cardholders of Southfields Branch Library, Leicester (a modernist classic from 1939, emanating outwards from a central
“Libraries often rank alongside town halls as architectural showpieces, worth a visit even if you’re not after a book”
high brick drum, colloquially known as the pork pie) and, of course, the mighty British Library. The 20th century’s largest UK public building, it’s as soaringly inspiring as its extraordinary contents, from Beatles lyric sheets to the Magna Carta to the 6.5 million recordings-strong sound archive. Not that cities hold all the biblio treasure; the library often ranked alongside the town hall as provincial architectural showpiece, still worth a visit even if you’re not book borrowing. Stockport Central Library, for instance: still going strong aged 103, this beauteous slice of Edwardian Baroque style was built with funds donated by Scottish-American business ace and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. You’ve perhaps heard of his hall in Manhattan…?
YOU KNOW, FOR KIDS
The modern library is the very epitome of open access for all, from tactile signposting to BSL-trained staff, with children the chief beneficiaries. Understandably keen to get youngsters into a library-visiting routine, your local branch likely hosts activities for each step of childhood, from ‘rhyme time’ for babies, to teenage book clubs and author talks. Fresh from Bristol comes the splendid Drag Queen Story Time, featuring none-more-theatrical readings from favourite children’s books (dragqueenstorytime.co.uk). “Drag queens and children don’t usually mix,” says founder Tom Canham. “It’s fundamental that children are taught the value of accepting themselves and others, and this is a useful way of introducing children to people who may be different to them.”