More on libraries

A number of things that have happened recently make me want to say a few more words about libraries. For one thing, there have been persistent and worrying stories in the press about cuts in the public library service in different parts of Britain. For another, opening this morning’s paper, I have just read a story about Manchester University library, where Chris Stringer’s Homo Britannicus, a book about the beginnings of the human species in Britain, has been shelved in the gay and lesbian section. For yet another, I’m worried that every time I go into my local library there seem to be fewer books on the shelves. Libraries, for all their PCs, bright paintwork, and rebranding as “knowledge stores”, seem to be in decline.

I was in a local library the other day. While I was sitting at a table sorting my papers I earwigged a conversation between one of the librarians and a teenager. The young library user told the librarian that she was doing a project on the Romantic poets at school, and needed to read some poems by two of the English Romantics. She knew that she wanted one of the poets to be Blake, but wasn’t sure about the second – Wordsworth, maybe, or Coleridge, or Shelley. The librarian explained that no books by the English Romantics were on open shelves – they were in the basement store. She’d go down and bring up a selection so that the girl could make her choice. After a few minutes the librarian, who I must say was helpful, polite, and knowledgeable, returned with a small pile of poetry books, including one or two Romantics, such as Byron, who had not been mentioned so far, and the young student looked through them and chose.

So all ended well, with the librarian offering valuable assistance, the library’s collection yielding the required volumes, and the student getting what she wanted. But wouldn’t it have been much better if Wordsworth, Coleridge, and co had been on open shelves, so that people could check them out for themselves without asking for them to be brought up from the basement? I wandered over to the library’s poetry section. It consisted almost entirely of books by recent poets, plus a shelf of anthologies, plus one or two ‘classics’ including Milton and Keats (aha! a Romantic on open shelves after all!). It seems to me that the library was diminished by this unwillingness to display the classics of English literature on its open shelves, as it is diminished too by the small number of novels published more than 50 years ago – and by the relatively small number of books generally visible.

Why does all this matter when the girl got what she wanted anyway? And when you can find the whole of English poetry on the internet, and even download for free the complete works of Shakespeare to read on your iPhone?

Well. Because books are actually a rather good medium for sustained reading. Because there are people who don’t know quite what they’re looking for, but who will make important discoveries and have their eyes and minds opened by browsing books on open shelves. Because books properly shelved in the context of other similar books show knowledge in context and continuum – there are all the Metaphysical poets together, all the books on Norman history next to one another. Because librarians ought to be allowed to make sensible, educative, structured choices about what books to display. Because there are clear and specific advantages to reading literary works such as the poems of Byron or Keats in book form instead of, or as well as, online.

For example, not every copy of a literary work has exactly the same text. This is because, for all kinds of reasons, the original words of the poet don’t always make it into print exactly as they should have done. Or, in some cases, it’s by no means clear precisely what those words were in the first place. So different copies have different texts. And some copies have useful notes, provided by the editor, to clarify meaning, sketch in historical background, or discuss precisely those pesky variations of wording.

A reader discovering poetry needs the best text they can get, properly edited, and preferably with explanatory notes and an introduction. This is not the kind of plain text that you usually find on the web. This is the kind of thing that should be in libraries, and was, not so long ago. Now if it is there it’s hidden away in a basement, waiting for readers who know what they want and a helpful member of staff to find it for them.

Books can be life-changing. I came from a family with few books and 40 years ago my eyes and mind were opened by libraries. I could follow the evolution of English literature, satisfy my nascent passion for architecture, and discover all kinds of things about history by just browsing. I didn’t have to ask anyone’s help; I could follow the shelves. So much was right there because librarians as competent and knowledgeable as today’s had put lots of good, revelatory, inspiring books on shelves, in order, under my nose. People today have the right to expect a service that’s just as good.