A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the local meeting I went to about the fate of my local library, and also wrote a rather furious open letter to the head of Somerset County Council.
Well, it seems Shepton Mallet library has been saved from definite closure. The local powers-that-be have said they’ve noted the response to their public consultation, and instead propose to cut hours across all libraries by 20% and only (!) put six libraries at risk of closure this year. It should be noted that this isn’t set in stone yet.
This is a bitter sweet victory. Whilst I am, of course, hugely relieved that Shepton’s library may well survive, I am still deeply upset about the loss of the other libraries – undoubtedly just as loved and depended upon as my local one.
On Saturday, there are “Love Our Library” events happening all over the country, and I will be going to the one in Shepton Mallet. But I know many of you, dear readers, are in different parts of the UK, in America and also Australia, so I thought it might be nice to do something here to build up to the 5th together.
Something that has struck me about all the people I’ve spoken to online and in person about the threat to the libraries is how personal this threat feels. I think it’s because we’re united by a common experience: powerful, visceral memories of the joy libraries gave us as children. So many people, including myself, remember a childhood in impoverished towns, in which the weekly trip to the library had the magical significance of entering Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. I want to share my shiniest, brightest memory from my library, and would love you to share yours too.
Camborne library: the bright centre of the universe
I grew up in a small mining town in Cornwall. Many of my friend’s fathers were miners in South Crofty tin mine, one that shut whilst I was still in primary school. It was a typical depressed town crippled by the loss of the mine, and at one point, it had 30% unemployment. I don’t recall any bookshops, there might have been a WHSmiths, but back then they were probably still just a newsagent.
Outside Camborne library there is a statue of the town’s famous son Richard Trevithick. Every time I went to the library, I’d look up at him and feel the sense of pride my primary school had instilled in me. “We might be a tiny, forgotten town,” it used to say, “But that doesn’t stop you doing something amazing that can change the world.”
It was a good message to get on the way into the library.
The moment I want to share with you, one which changed the course of my life, happened in this very library. Even now I can see the light streaming in through the high windows, countless motes of dust tumbling in the cavernous space and everywhere books, books, books! Ones I could thumb through and sit with and explore and choose to take home. Bliss.
I don’t know what day it was, or my exact age (I think about 7 or 8 years old) but I do remember drifting along the bookshelves, that delicious, musty, unmistakably bookish smell filling me. I came across a shelf I hadn’t yet discovered, a book was sticking out a little further than the rest. I reached up and plucked it out. It had a cover unlike any I had seen before.
It was Trillions, by Nicholas Fisk. It was the first science-fiction book I had ever really seen, let alone read. I sat down, read the first page and that was it. The beginning of a journey that led me to Asimov, Moorcock, Wyndham, Bester and of course, my hero, Ray Bradbury.
And what do I write now? Speculative fiction, with large dollops of sci-fi. What is the genre of my debut novel? Dystopian, set in post-apocalyptic London. I can truly say that day in Camborne library changed my life forever.
What’s your brightest library memory? I’d love it if you could either share it in the comments, or if you want to write a post, please do put the link in a comment so we can all share each others memories.
well done on helping to save your branch – maybe as the fight continues some of the others can be put on reduced hours – we can but hope. I am away to write a blog and link it here – if I can work out how!!!!
Congrats! Let’s hope there are equally passionate people in the catchments of those other six libraries who will do for theirs what you and others have done for yours.
I remember as a child finding school an oppressive and depressing place. My local library was an escape from all that. We’d always had books around at home, “grown up’s” books, nothing that captured my imagination and my pittance of pocket money didn’t allow for trips to bookshops, but at the library…row upon row, shelf upon shelf of all manner of wonderful bookery.
I was a bit of a Dr Who fan even back then, and our library had the entire set of Dr Who novels, the ones published by Target if memory serves. It took me a while, but I got through the lot, all sixty-odd of them. At one stage I was reading six a week.
I still remember the librarian asking, “Have you not read all these already?”
“Nope!” Grins and staggers out with a huge stack of books.
Nothing beats that first spark of library enthusiasm.
Magical.
Forests, libraries… these are things that keep us sane, make us human, allow us to grow, and offer sanctuary.
Will see if I can write something too over the next few days.
My brightest library memory is of the Oxfordshire Mobile Library, a big grey Commer van in those days, parked in front of the church in the village I grew up in on cold winter mornings. Standing in front of its Calor gas heater and choosing my books. I can’t remember a defining moment, however I do remember it as the source of my grandmother’s Ulverscroft large print books which made ilicit reading of Agatha Christie under the bedclothes with a torch so much easier.
Library memories … where to start? My favourite childhood one comes from when my family lived overseas, in this particular instance in North Africa.
My mother used to go shopping in the town on Fridays and it was my weekly treat to go with her and visit the library run by the British Council. The books were generally very dog-eared, dusty (from the sand that regularly blew in off the Sahara) and (like yours, Emma) musty, too – but oh, what treasures!
It wasn’t a big library so I must have read and re-read every children’s book in it many times over; the books becoming my paper friends in a world that was, by the nature of its location, rather lonely and lacking in human ones.
As an adult I tracked down and bought some of my favourites from back then, and I still love reading them.
Congratulations on making an impact, Emma! No matter how small, it matters. It really does. And it sounds like this wasn’t small.
My shiniest library memory? It’s difficult to pick. I’ve been enjoying & then working in them for most of my life. But it’s definitely among the times I’ve helped someone find a book or a piece of information and seen their face just light up (it actually does that) and their smile get huge. Sometimes it’s something they’ve been waiting on for ages (new fiction) and sometimes it’s a piece of information that they thought they’d never have, like a way to get in touch with lost family, or details about a Grandfather’s service time, or hope for a project they thought was going to be abandoned. Every single time someone has looked at me and I can see how happy and relieved they are, I feel that great glow. I hope I can continue seeing it for my whole life.
Hi – I have linked your page to my blog on libraries and what they have meant to this oldie.
on http://didyoueverkissafrog.typepad.com
what libraries are still at risk of closure????
Thanks guys, I’m catching up on my comments…
@Caroline – such an evocative memory!
@Jen – That must feel good – and I hope the same too. A good librarian is worth their weight in gold covered books.
@Emily – The picture is changing all the time. One place to follow it all is here: http://www.voicesforthelibrary.org.uk/wordpress/?page_id=765 – there is lots of other good stuff on that site too