A hefty hardback copy of Watership Down I insisted on getting out after watching the film, but which my seven-year-old brain found a little too cumbersome. What I loved about reading when I was young, and still love today, in bed before turning out the light or on the sofa with a cup of tea as the sun slips from the sky, is the ability to escape into a different world.
To leave your daily troubles behind and disappear for a moment into another life. And so perhaps it is for this reason that I find it so utterly nonsensical at a time when reading — proper reading I mean, not scrolling through a phone — has never been more important, to learn that Stirling Council is looking at shutting down 16 libraries, leaving almost , people with a single library for all their reading needs.
Stirling Council, like just about every other local authority in the country, is facing a funding black hole. While we all understand that money is tight, shutting down libraries — so often the lifeblood of a community — seems like a terribly backwards move.
In January, Midlothian Council proposed replacing public library staff with self-service machines and introducing e-books instead of replenishing the physical stock across its nine libraries. Children — particularly those from low income homes where books are a luxury that cannot always be afforded — are a key demographic for libraries, as they should be.
No child should be denied access to books and learning. It is one of the things that sticks in the craw so much about these closures: they will disproportionately affect those most in need. For many,. Why would you want to deny so many so much? And librarians and libraries are the most important people and places for fostering a love of reading. Stop people reading and you stop them thinking for themselves.
