Have faith in libraries, a mark of civilisation

And yet my urge to rejoin the library was strong. It felt to me an act of solidarity was required at a time when a wave of library closures is again threatened across Scotland, particularly in Glasgow where underuse is cited as a justification for closing facilities that have served communities for more than a century. Campaigners in turn claim that underuse is a consequence of underinvestment.

I owe libraries my living. There were only five books in the house in which I grew up and one of those was a Haynes manual for a Ford Cortina, so its literary merit was somewhat limited. I did all my childhood reading courtesy of the Coldside public library in Dundee, not far from the Hilltown where I spent my earliest years.

Often in biographies I read of childhoods spent devouring all of Dickens at a precocious age. For me, it was mostly Biggles books: the gung-ho adventures of a square-jawed British hero of the empire. “Captain” WE Johns wrote more than a hundred and I must have read most of them. Barely a step up from comics, really, but what of it? As every parent eventually realises when it comes to childhood reading, the choice of fuel is less important than keeping the fire burning.

Recently on a whim I revisited Coldside. When I walked in through the big, heavy Victorian doors with their big, brass handles I felt immediately at peace. I had a sense of safety, a sense of possibility. If I can help pass on that sensation to another child by securing the future of my own library then I will feel I have paid my dues.

My old university friend Ali Smith, shortlisted four times for the Booker prize, says the act of reading is a kind of borrowing. Her proudest moment was being given an adult library card at the age of six so she could borrow more books from her local library in Inverness. In her collection Public Library and Other Stories she makes a passionate case for a library ticket as a passport to understanding and empathy. Moreover, she sees the library as that rarity in the 21st century, a truly civic space with no ulterior commercial motive.

For Smith the “democracy of reading” and the “democracy of space” go hand in hand.

“Our public library tradition,” she writes, “wherever we live in the wide world, was incredibly hard won for us by the generations before us and ought to be protected, not just for ourselves but in the name of every generation after us.”

Libraries often feel the need for reinvention. My local branch is next door to a primary school and I recall kids in my sons’ classes queueing up to use computers for their homework because there was no such technology at home. At its core, though, the library is all about the written word. It celebrates ideas in a setting that dignifies community. It may be called a lending library but it gives unconditionally.

Lofty buildings such as the Mitchell Library inspire equally lofty ideals

GLASGOW LIFE/PA

Again, the building is important. Glasgow is said to be considering moving some library facilities from original Victorian buildings — places like Maryhill public library, which is 117 years old — into sports centres.

You can see the logic and even sympathise with some of the rationale but what would be lost is incalculable. I am a great believer in the power of architecture to shape human beings. Order begets order. Lofty ceilings beget lofty ideals. A backroom in a leisure centre cannot hope to lift hearts in the same way as a municipal library that has performed the same noble function in a city or town since the days of horse-drawn carriages. In an increasingly secular society these are the places we now hold sacred.

Glasgow’s libraries are run at arm’s length from the city council by a charity called Glasgow Life. It lost almost £40 million last year because of coronavirus. No dates have been set for the reopening of five of the city’s 33 public libraries and without new funding their future looks bleak. Residents on the south side of the city have been holding weekly readings on the steps outside the locked doors of the Couper Institute.

It is not just libraries. Attractions such as the St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, recognised globally as a pioneer, are also under threat. Without extra funding Glasgow Life says that it will have to lose 500 staff across its culture, museums and sports services.

No one really knows how tight the public spending squeeze will be in the next few years and if past experience is any guide culture at both national and local level will be regarded by decision-makers as inessential when in fact, in the hardest of times, it is food for the soul. Even in a hard-headed economic calculation Glasgow will thrive only if it uses its cultural capital to sell itself to the world.

I say this to the city’s fathers and mothers, and to ministers in the Scottish government. Have some pride. Have some self-respect. Have some faith. Know that your city’s libraries are a mark of civilisation. A failure to protect them is a failure to understand what makes your city truly great.

Smith’s book about libraries begins like this: “Hello. This book wishes you well. It wishes you the world. It wishes you somewhere warm, safe, well-lit, thoughtful, free, wide open to everybody, where you’ll be surrounded by books and all the different possible ways of reading them.

“It wishes you fierceness and determination if anyone or anything threatens to take away your open access to place, space, time, thought, knowledge.

“It wishes you libraries — endless public libraries.”