Whenever you pass a Library, never fail to give a quiet blessing to those who work in its rooms, quietly providing an invincible service. You cannot easily measure the huge impact on society of encouraging children to love books and reading.
I’ve always loved libraries. Nearly 70 years have passed since I first went to Cambridge and visited the Seeley Historical Library near Parliament House. In that library I spent some of the happiest hours of my life: I still remember the special perfume that went through those book corridors – a mixture of book stain, old ink, antique shelves and the apple scholars brought to me ‘ w eat for lunch. . On those quiet autumn afternoons, I began in earnest on that never-ending adventure of searching for information and discovering new opinions and facts.
Libraries are where language is most honored. And language, of all man-made art, is by far the most valuable. WH Auden’s epitaph for fellow poet WB Yeats is telling the truth:
“A time that is intolerant
Of the brave and the innocent
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique
Worship language and forgiveness
Everyone he lives with. ”
The semi-literate West Saxon kings of the 10th Century thought that books were so valuable that they stored them with the holiest of their religious relics. So will libraries always be sacred places and librarians be their sacred keepers.
I admit that libraries can become repositories not in books, but as computers inherit the world, from databases. The thought that even scholars and bibliographies can now put entire libraries in their pockets and consult them on home computer screens fills me with wonder but also disappointment.
And yet I know that libraries have to move with technology and the times. There must have been some who hated the soft cover revolution and longed for a time when books were yellow wrapped and bound with gilded leather. No doubt there were medieval Luddites, the quill monks and the illuminated scroll, who tried to break down the first presses made by Gutenberg. But anything that promotes learning is extremely valuable and must be actively encouraged. I will never understand what gigabytes are but if the technology involved helps fill a child’s mind with knowledge then let the gigabyte multiply in all libraries, large and small, and in all the School’s rooms.
And yet, I can’t believe the book will ever be over. Technicians should never assume that books are just primitive databases, ignoring their aesthetic and emotional wealth. A visual display unit can be a mistake but leaves a book lover out for the sake of the book. The browsing of a book, the turning of the pages and the look and feel of them, a small but satisfying spine crack are important as well as the text. There is no closeness in a magnetic disc. A book is still the most convenient package of pleasure, power and enlightenment yet invented by man. And the cheapest way out of existence poverty – and out of the existence of poverty – is still, all over the world, good books.
But whether one is a computer buff and sees the future of electronic databases, hard drives, dvds and flash drives or whether one is fond of old-fashioned books standing on their shelves, row upon glorious row , the objective is the same: peaceful information and entertainment for as many people as possible. And libraries will serve that purpose as they do in all lands from time to time. In our country, in our age, reading must be freely available to all. Open access to education, information and literature as offered by public libraries is one of the keys to a civilized and democratic society. In the 14th Century Lollards died for the right to read their own books in their own language.
Andrew Carnegie, founder of libraries in countries around the world including Guyana, wrote, “Libraries have the right to be given first place as institutions for the elevation of the masses of the people.” That is simply another way of expressing the encouragement that encourages “empowering the people.”
The new Government, which has started well and vigorously, must make a major improvement in education an absolute priority. This should be related to encouraging hunger among the young for the written word, initially computerized but gradually building into a greater love for reading books on kindle or i-Pad or, in my own old fashioned choice , from shelves in many extended national library systems.