Love Your Library

London’s libraries are in danger. All the political parties were talking about them last May, when the general election campaigns were in full swing. Concerned Question Time panelists declared to nodding audiences that libraries must be preserved for our children, and for their children too.

People who had never been to their local library started campaigning for it to be saved. Everyone was in agreement. Everyone was a library lover. The problem is that, 18 months later, no-one is talking about them now and libraries are quietly closing across the capital as local councils try to cut costs.

Some say that libraries are irrelevant, in the age of smartphones, Kindles and Amazon’s seemingly limitless digital shelves. Whilst our parents grew up with only three or four TV channels, wooden toys and perhaps a chess board as their main distractions, today’s toddlers are entering a world where borrowing a physical book from a library seems almost prehistoric.

But I urge libraries not to try and keep up. Their unique selling point is precisely their separation from the fast-paced world outside their creaking wooden doors. It’s ok that they have Amstrad computers that take 20 seconds to respond to the click of a mouse. I don’t mind that everyone working at my local library in East Dulwich appears to be called Maurine. This is what we want from our libraries. They should be old school, slow paced and a bit dusty.

For the atheists among us, libraries are the capital’s secular churches. Libraries don’t judge us. They don’t mind if we take out the latest John Grisham novel or The Complete History of Linen (which is a hoot, by the way). They don’t mind if we don’t show up for a few weeks. And they don’t really mind if we just wander in for some peace and quiet from the wife/husband/kids/crazy man at the bus stop (delete as appropriate).

The first public library in England was set up at the London Guildhall in 1425 and there are still hundreds of wonderful buildings in our capital. The pick of the bunch is possibly the simply named London Library in St James’s Square, which is the largest independent lending library in the world.

And there’s more to these buildings than books. They are an untapped resource for music (in retro CD form, admittedly), with most places having surprisingly large collections. Or instead of waiting for three or four days for your next Lovefilm DVD to arrive in the post, why not pop to your local library and be back on the sofa watching a film in half an hour? Add to that all the book clubs, creative writing groups and language lessons that are run at London’s libraries and it’s difficult to contemplate losing them.

Enjoy them while you can.

Image by Loz Flowers courtesy of Flickr