When did you last visit a library?
By John Welford
@indexer (4852)
Leicester, England
October 23, 2015 2:37am CST
I will soon be getting on a bus to go to Hinckley (Leicestershire) for the weekly meeting of the Scribblers Club that I joined a few weeks ago. This takes place in a meeting room at Hinckley Library, and I am always struck by just how many people are using the library when I walk through it to get to and from the meeting room.
I am also involved in the efforts to rescue the library in Newbold Verdon, which is a village very close to my own. This library (see picture) is threatened with closure unless local people are willing to take it over and run it themselves with volunteers. Again, it is striking just how well used this library is - not just for book loans but all the other activities that take place there.
With public-funded facilities the cry is often "use it or lose it". In the case of our local libraries, use does not seem to be a problem, but loss still might be - if we cannot find enough volunteers to keep it going.
(I should point out that the library at Hinckley is not under threat because it is one of the "core" libraries that the county will continue to support. However, there are more than 30 village libraries in the county that are having to go down the same road as Newbold Verdon)
6 people like this
7 responses
@bookbar (1609)
• Sudbury, England
23 Oct 15
I love Libraries and Book shops, and would hate to lose either, as you say usage is not the problem with libraries, funding is.... we also used to have a Mobile library, that toured the villages, but that seems to have disappeared, online reading will never be the same, as book handling.
2 people like this
@Rollo1 (16679)
• Boston, Massachusetts
23 Oct 15
When I was a teen, I practically lived at the library. I remember many afternoons spent there. It's not the same anymore. They've refurbished and modernized and remodeled so that the creaky old floors no longer creak and the stairs are no longer threatening to give way and it has lost that wonderful musty smell. But I don't go to the library at all anymore and not just because I hate the color they painted the exterior. The internet has replaced it as a place to find books, do research and discover music.
@ria1606roy (2797)
• Kolkata, India
25 Oct 15
That's sad that some of the village libraries are on the verge of closing down. I happen to love libraries, but maintaining it is important too. Over here, I don't see libraries close by, and the last time I was in one was when I was in High School. In college, what we have isn't library as such, more as a storehouse of collection of med books from which one can borrow for reference.
