My love of reading can be attributed to the many afternoons when my mother would take me to the public library, allow me to wander the stacks and leave me to read whatever books I found.
It was also a signal for a morning or afternoon of one-on-one time with her.
The public library always felt like a familiar place, no matter its location. As a student, it was a place of solitude as I holed up in a corner and went to work. I still use it for that purpose on those days where there’s too many distractions happening elsewhere (it’s not uncommon for me to leave my classroom at the end of the day and get my marking done at the nearest branch).
Many of the book reviews on this site are thanks to the inter-library loans, alongside the discovery of new authors I look forward to reading. Access to audiobooks, digital texts and museum passes are also attributed to the funding provided to these cultural centres.
A disregard for our libraries is a disregard for the cultural hubs they are. While the Internet has displaced many of our societal structures, it’s a dangerous route to suggest it has replaced the need for a physical gathering point of information.
The head-shaking stupidity we often read about in the news, or see in the many social media posts, is an indication that our move towards a more educated society took a wrong turn somewhere. Instead of making us more informed, we appear to be getting more gullible and susceptible to propaganda and half-truths with convincing orators.
If the Internet is a place where bits of information are consumed with slivers of time, the library stands as our counter-measure where quantities of information and stories are cherished with deep pockets of focus.
It gives access to those who don’t have the means at home.
If society collapsed tomorrow, our libraries would still store much of the knowledge we need to get up and running again.
Any closure of a library branch is our failure to appreciate how they are a pillar of society. It used to take a raid from another civilization to raze one to the ground.
Today, we only need the off-beat decision of a politician looking to save money to make it happen.
We already have enough people who don’t value education (talk about how it’s useless, yet loudly complain about how other countries are doing so much better), any further encroachment on our intellectual spheres only leaves me with this to say:
You got exactly what you deserved.