As hundreds of real libraries close down, these tatty old crates enrage librarian Katrina Robinson
When is a library not a library?
When it’s a disused phone box (or other roadside receptacle), with a few Maeve Binchy or Tom Clancy paperbacks thrown on the directory shelf, plus quite possibly Windows 95 For Dummies.
I’m a librarian – so people think I should love it when people put any old books in any old crate and label it ‘Library’. They think I’m blaspheming against mighty Thoth, the Egyptian god of reading, when I tell them how I feel.
I feel the way any worth-her-salt GP would feel if she spotted a rusty first-aid box by the side of the road, with ‘Hospital’ emblazoned all over it – while real hospitals were closing or becoming semi-open ‘community hospitals’ staffed by unqualified volunteers.
It would feel like a sick joke, the worst of it being that sights like these self-designated ‘hospitals’ might be slowly conditioning patients to accept it.
If a first-aid box isn’t a hospital, then a phone box containing some books isn’t a library.
Language matters. It’s not petty or pedantic to call out misnomers when you see them. Of course, some politicians might prefer it if we gradually came to associate the word ‘library’ with random shacks of discarded books, instead of with properly maintained buildings with knowledgeable librarians; internet access for those who don’t have it; and literacy and tech support for adults and, above all, children. Through libraries, children are given the key to unlock the world beyond their own early circumstances.
If you value reading and information, don’t let some well-meaning but unaware person get away with a proud social-media selfie of themselves posing in front of a container of books, on which they’ve stamped the word ‘Library’. Politely say, ‘Oh, how lovely. But aren’t they called book swaps these days, not libraries?’ Quietly re-relabel if necessary.
And, as I’m sitting in a real library right now, I can’t say that quietly enough.
