Libraries offer us more than just books
Your series “What home means to me” will have resonated with many readers, as shown by the responses to Michael Rosen’s reflections (Letters, 3 January). I was particularly struck by the significance of stories to Elif Shafak (Strasbourg, Ankara, Madrid: none felt like home, but in books I discovered my people, 2 January), and the specificity of the local library to Joanne Harris (I was snowed in at Barnsley library and a policeman came to fetch me. I told him I was already home, 5 January) as the place for locating them. I recall the excitement of joining the children’s section of Leytonstone library in east London at seven or eight and regularly choosing my four books to take home.
One Saturday, I read them all in the morning and returned them in the afternoon in the hope of borrowing a further four, only to be admonished by the librarian, who insisted that I was limited to four per day. I later graduated to the adult section, becoming, at 10, a devotee of PG Wodehouse and his old Etonian socialist creation Psmith.
Some 175 years after the Public Libraries Act, libraries remain critical for promoting literacy, particularly among those with less access to books at home. It is a sad reflection of austerity that so many public libraries have closed. The government has much to remedy in the public realm, but should not neglect the importance of the library sector, which, like the NHS, stands as a marker of a society that prioritises the needs of all, irrespective of individual circumstances.
Dr Anthony Isaacs
Chair, Friends of Belsize Community Library, London
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