[Link] ‘A shell of the place it used to be’: readers on the importance of libraries - and their fragile future

by Alfie Packham

“There’s a random element to life, which I think is important to preserve. Browsing through books is not a rational activity; it’s not like using a computer search to find what you want. Serendipity is another word that comes to mind.”

For Jamie Page, 66, libraries can provide the kind of chance encounter that you can’t find in bookshops that mainly tout new titles. In 1980, he was an unemployed graduate wondering what sort of career he might have. One day, at Brompton library in Kensington, he stumbled across a book on bacteria. “I found it fascinating, he says. “It started my career and I’ve been working in science ever since.”

The aptly named Page is one of scores of people to share with the Guardian stories of how libraries affected their lives after reports of a decline in council-run libraries across the UK. According to an analysis by the BBC, more than 180 have either closed or been handed to volunteer groups since 2016.

The author Lee Child told the BBC that his crime thriller protagonist Jack Reacher wouldn’t exist without Birmingham’s libraries, which are under threat of closure. “You speak to any writer and they’ll tell you the same thing: that those early years of reading, reading, reading, reading for decades – that’s what turns you into a writer,” Child said.

“I’m so sentimental about it and so emotional about it, because that building saved my life at the time, it enabled it. It largely created it.”

Read the full article: https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/sep/06/essential-for-me-readers-on-the-importance-of-libraries