I've been going to the library longer than I remember. I grew up with Babysitters' Club books and Sweet Valley High and (Sweet Valley Twins). I read loads of Point Horror and Point Romance. I discovered Jane Austen. I read Junk by Melvin Burgess (an absolutely amazing book about heroin addiction). In the summer I'd sit in the garden and read about four books a day. I was a happy little freak.
My University Library was a lovely place that smelled of dust and had all sorts of things inside - The Child That Books Built by Francis Spufford, A Series of Unfortunate Events and the play(s) Angels in America by Tony Kushner that I devoured one train journey home after seeing the HBO version on Channel 4 over two nights of televisual perfection.
And now, I'm back at the beginning - I work in the library that nourished me as a child. The place that provided the books that provided my escape. When I was very young I learned how to disappear entirely into fiction as a way to block to football out. It is perhaps the only reason I am grateful for the existance of football - it gave me the ability to read in any conditions. No matter how much noise or how many people are talking around me I can still be completely absorbed by a book.
And now that I'm in one for more hours a day than I see my friends or family do I still love libraries? God, yes. Each day I browse the shelves, planning my reading, dreaming of days off filled with books. Me and my friends at work are constantly pulling books off shelves and putting them to one side, we reserve the books we're dying to read and keep up to date with what's going on in fiction. And that's awesome.
However, there are those who don't quite appreciate the library - the customers. Most of the customers we have are lovely, from the little old ladies who read twelve Mills and Boon romances a week to the little kids working their way through the Beast Quest series, the chatty little girl who goes on the computer and tells me what she's been up to, the babies beginning to choose books on their own, learning to read with Charlie and Lola, the students with deadlines desperate for specific texts. Helping all of these people is fulfilling and meaningful. I know that libraries have a direct impact on these lives.
Unfortunately, there is an inverse correlation between niceness of customer and time spent in the library. That is to say for every delightful, insightful reader who pops in for an hour or so every few weeks there is the person who turns up at 9am each day and is there until closing (as late as 7pm) - that's ten hours a day spent on facebook, playing solitaire and being rude to us.
There are the customers who smell dreadful, the ones without any manners who bark 'computer' at you, the ones who ask impossible questions, complain about all manner of things, spit, drool, swear. I once had to tell someone to remove his hand from inside his sweatpants. Suffice is to say we get through a lot of hand sanitiser! It is not always a great job and I come into contact with many people I wish I didn't ever have to see in my life. Sometimes it makes me sad that I see these appaling people more than I could ever hope to see my boyfriend.
However, all of these people need libraries. And I will fight for all of these people - not just the sweet old lady I see every day for a chat who is like everyone's Gran, not just the brilliant old man I've been teaching to use the computer (a true gentleman of the old school who shakes my hand and behaves the way people did in the past), not just the toddlers I sing nursery rhymes with or their harrassed mothers, not just the school children who come to visit the library (ensuring that even if their parents don't bring them they still get to experience the wonder of the place), or the polite (and rather good looking) customers from Eastern Europe who use the Internet to stay in touch with family and friends. All of these people need the library, it's true, but maybe the people that need it even more are the people I don't like - people that for whatever reason there isn't really a place for in the world. I think that a lot of the people who are in lots (like the old men who read the papers) are there to stay warm, to save money on heating bills, to socialise, to get out of the house. They're there because for them there is nowhere else to go and nothing else to do.
There's more to say about my library, of course. There's the Customer Service Centre stuff (a new element of libraries and one we'll probably see more and more), there's our new location in the same building as the local Health Centre so we have to deal with all manner of questions and even people trying to hand in bodily fluids!
But for now, I hope it's enough just to say: You can read books for free. Almost any book you can imagine. We'll track it down for you. You can take up to twelve books - entirely free!! David Mitchell was talking about being proud of living in a country where you were given a grant to go to University. Those days are, very sadly, over (and I'm reminded of that with every student loan letter) but we still have the NHS and we still have libraries. Places where things shouldn't be commodified and can't be.
Libraries will never make a profit but they do make people happy, they enrich our lives and I don't want to live in a world where books and libraries are not seen as priceless.
And as the brilliant Doctor says:
"Books! People never really stop loving books. 51st century. By now you've got holovids, direct to brain downloads, fiction mist, but you need the smell. The smell of books, Donna. Deep breath."
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