My love affair with libraries goes back a long way. I vividly remember as a small girl wobbling down two streets on my bicycle to the mobile library on wednesday afternoons. I remember the green plastic cards I had to hand over to borrow books and the small pink zip-up bag attached to the back of my bike in which I stored them. I'd then wobble back home again and devour several books a week before doing the whole thing again the following wednesday.
I remember the library at primary school, a small, safe room lined with worlds filled with mysteries, histories and adventures. And then at secondary school, that stone-floored room I revered in which I discovered all kinds of new writers. At University, let's face it, the library was the place to flirt as well as study and all kinds of friendships were made and broken in and outside of that great ship of learning.
When my first child was born, the local library became a refuge for me: heavy-lidded and bemused by this new mothering experience, I spent more and more time within its forgiving walls, laying my daughter on the mat as she burbled whilst I sat beside her in silent zombied stupefaction. Then as she grew, she started to interact more with her surroundings, first staring at the books, then reaching out for them, then crawling towards them and pulling them from their shelves, and finally choosing them herself, a process which was repeated with my second child, and now my third.
If I have ever found myself in a new place and have time to kill, I have often found myself at the local library. There's always something infinitely friendly about them - it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't even matter if you want to just sit there quietly and read the paper - libraries are warm, open places and it still blows me away that the services they provide are largely free.
It's been a while now since library services have started to be axed as a result of budget cuts and branches closed down. And whilst I wholeheartedly agree that this is bad news, I think a point is being missed somewhere along the line. According to a report commissioned by the government's Departure for Culture, Media and Sports, the number of people visiting libraries in England has fallen steadily over the past five years, from 16.4% visiting monthly in 2005, to 12.8% in 2010.Services obviously need to be used in order for them to be viable and for the government to invest in them. So where should we start? From the bottom up: with children.
Why not make visits to libraries part of the school curriculum? Not only would this help engender a love of books and reading from a young age, but it could help to break the chain in future years of library apathy. After all, book-loving children often turn into book-loving teenagers who turn into book-loving adults. And which book-loving adult can resist an entire library filled with free-to-read books?
Alan Gibbons' blog highlights the plight of nationwide libraries.
I remember the library at primary school, a small, safe room lined with worlds filled with mysteries, histories and adventures. And then at secondary school, that stone-floored room I revered in which I discovered all kinds of new writers. At University, let's face it, the library was the place to flirt as well as study and all kinds of friendships were made and broken in and outside of that great ship of learning.
When my first child was born, the local library became a refuge for me: heavy-lidded and bemused by this new mothering experience, I spent more and more time within its forgiving walls, laying my daughter on the mat as she burbled whilst I sat beside her in silent zombied stupefaction. Then as she grew, she started to interact more with her surroundings, first staring at the books, then reaching out for them, then crawling towards them and pulling them from their shelves, and finally choosing them herself, a process which was repeated with my second child, and now my third.
If I have ever found myself in a new place and have time to kill, I have often found myself at the local library. There's always something infinitely friendly about them - it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't even matter if you want to just sit there quietly and read the paper - libraries are warm, open places and it still blows me away that the services they provide are largely free.
It's been a while now since library services have started to be axed as a result of budget cuts and branches closed down. And whilst I wholeheartedly agree that this is bad news, I think a point is being missed somewhere along the line. According to a report commissioned by the government's Departure for Culture, Media and Sports, the number of people visiting libraries in England has fallen steadily over the past five years, from 16.4% visiting monthly in 2005, to 12.8% in 2010.Services obviously need to be used in order for them to be viable and for the government to invest in them. So where should we start? From the bottom up: with children.
Why not make visits to libraries part of the school curriculum? Not only would this help engender a love of books and reading from a young age, but it could help to break the chain in future years of library apathy. After all, book-loving children often turn into book-loving teenagers who turn into book-loving adults. And which book-loving adult can resist an entire library filled with free-to-read books?
Alan Gibbons' blog highlights the plight of nationwide libraries.
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