‘It turned out to be near impossible to stand in a library and not want to pull things from the shelves’
MATT HAIG, THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY
Book lover’s paradise
A celebration of libraries as they used to be
The library is dead. Long live the library!
The Victorians began the mass building of libraries, so picture a typical example, neo-classical in sandstone, with a broad flight of steps and four pillars. It’s a Saturday, and you’re climbing those steps, clutching a pile of books to your chest.
The grand front doors are propped open, which is all the welcome you need. Push open the wood and glass of the inner doors, and the noise of the city ceases. Inside, all is serenity.
Feast for the senses
Take a moment to breathe in the scent of the library. There’s beeswax polish on the parquet floor and the smell of 10,000 pages waiting to be unfurled. Attune your ears to the sounds – the scratch of a pen, the tap-tap of heels, the click of the librarian’s stamp… a squeak of wheels as a stepstool is used to access a high shelf, a whispered conversation from the stacks. Walk over to the librarian behind a raised circular desk.
She’s the ruler of this domain, dishing out fines and glares, the inked stamp her cudgel. Meekly leave your returned books on the counter, and scurry to the safety of the shelves. And what shelves! They reach towards the skylights in the domed ceiling. In the library of dreams, you can find any book you wish, on any topic you care to name, each book labelled and categorised. Forget the dopamine hit of clickbait – this is a rabbit hole you want to get lost down. Take an aisle at random and let your eyes and fingers wander the spines, until a title catches your eye.
It’s weighty in your hands, the jacket slippery with the plastic backing. Glued to the title page is a checkout slip, collaged with
Libraries have transformed. With visits to them in the UK falling dramatically and spending on them down by almost 50 per cent since 2010, there’s been no choice: evolve into a multi-use centre or die. The Scottish town of Paisley’s new £7m library – which opened in November 2023 – is branded a ‘learning and cultural hub’, with spaces for families and events, plus IT and digital facilities. The emphasis in libraries today is on a relaxed, inclusive space. You’ll often find low shelves and a brightly coloured children’s area with friendly furnishing. You’re likely to be able to order a latte as you work at your laptop, hear a local author giving a talk or peruse an art installation. You might feel no need to use it for its original intention: borrow a book, read it and return it a few weeks later. Yet, within this welcome change lies a loss. There’s a loss of silence, yes, thanks to noises such as the grind of the coffee machine and the clatter of keyboards. But it’s more than that. Although the press release touts Paisley library as a place to ‘get away from it all’, in a multi-use centre with wi-fi, it can never be that – or at least, not in the way it once was. Because, once upon a time, the library was a place of escape. A hushed environment, where, behind double-height shelves, was an opportunity to get lost in other worlds. In a library, you were left alone – and it’s that, in today’s hypervigilant world, that is the biggest loss. For everyone from the bookish child to the stressed-out adult, the library was a place where nobody could get you. Maybe you, too, remember a time when you felt the freedom of the library and had all the company and adventure you needed within the pages of a plastic-backed book. If, like me, you do, then come on a journey. It’s not exactly to the past, which holds its own challenges. Instead, it’s to the library as you’ve always wanted it to be. Take a trip to the library of dreams.
stamped dates, and in the corner, a pocket that holds an index card of details.
In the library of dreams, you’ll find a cosy nook, with a yellow lamp and a leather upholstered chair. If you wish, you can curl up there and listen to rain hammering the panes outside. Or carry a pile of tomes to a central table and take a seat with scattered others of your tribe. Alternatively, simply lean against a shelf and lose yourself for an hour as you read. You might find your way to that same squeaky-wheeled stool, but really, it doesn’t matter where you are, because part of you is on the battlefield or in outer space, falling in love or solving a murder. When you’re ready, having perused at leisure, gather a pile of books and transport them to the desk. The librarian nods approvingly at your choices. She takes out the index card and files it, then stamps your book with the date of return. She passes them to you across the desk, and a month’s worth of adventure is yours.
Place of discovery
What stories do you have of the magic of libraries? At 16, I discovered the horrors of World War One, purely because the minuscule section of books for teenagers was placed after the non-fiction shelves. Once I’d read my way through a shelf’s worth of Pan Horizons (publishers of classics such as Forever by Judy Blume and I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois
Duncan), I turned to the adult shelf behind and ‘W’ for War. There, I discovered Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves, They Called It Passchendaele by Lyn Macdonald, and the poems of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen.
‘I have massively fond memories of going regularly to my local library in the East End of London as a child,’ says life coach Brenda Pollack. ‘I used to be in heaven choosing my three or four books, and I think they showed me the possibilities “out there”, beyond the horizons of my day-to-day.’ It also, she says, led to her being a lifelong Agatha Christie fan. ‘I think libraries are such an important resource to encourage children and adults who otherwise can’t access books to engage in reading.’
Meanwhile, copywriter Katerina Gadzheva credits her local librarian with encouraging her to improve her command of the English language. ‘I lived in a small mountain town in Bulgaria,’ she says. ‘I wanted to borrow a [translated] copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray, but the librarian encouraged me to opt for the original English version instead.’ It is, she thinks, one of the reasons she now works internationally.
The library of dreams also blooms in popular culture – and rarely is it the multimedia hub of today’s ‘learning centres’. Instead, modern film-makers and writers look elsewhere to inform their visions. Matt Haig’s 2020 novel, The Midnight Library is about possibilities, regrets and the choices that make up a life. The metaphor he chooses is a seemingly endless
library, with high shelves and thickly bound books. Meanwhile, the Hogwarts Library, from JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, has been immortalised on both page and film. It has everything you could wish for, including chained books, towering shelves, walkways and, of course, a restricted area. For younger children, Roald Dahl’s Matilda creates a library with cosy corners and a motherly librarian in Mrs Phelps. Precocious four-year-old Matilda reads Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations curled up in ‘the big armchair at the far end of the room’, before going on to tackle Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell, among others.
Fine examples
Yet even though libraries such as these exist as fantasies, they’re not extinct. The library in the 1996 film adaptation of Matilda was filmed at the Doheny Memorial Library, part of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. With vaulted ceilings, marble staircases and stained glass filtering a blue Californian sky, it’s a grand, US-flavoured escape. The location for the Hogwarts Library was the Bodleian (pictured overleaf) in Oxford, England. Accessible for any Oxford University student – and via a guided tour for the rest of us – it’s the quintessential library of dreams. As in the Harry Potter series, the library contains chained books, walkways and a restricted section. It holds Shakespeare’s first folio and Dr Johnson’s dictionaries, and is legally entitled to a copy of
‘She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village’
ROALD DAHL, MATILDA
every book published in the UK and Ireland. It arguably goes further than the quirks of Hogwarts, because the books are arranged not by author name or subject category, but by size. If you’re in the mood for a book that’s six by seven inches, for example, the Bodleian is the place to go.
As for public libraries, that they’re still in use despite recent closures is generally agreed to be of vital importance. Their transformation has been essential to ensure their survival. Low shelves on wheels ensure safety and can be moved to alter the venue. Children are able to associate stories with fun and movement as much as a quiet escape. And a space for all-day use that doesn’t require a private membership is rarer than a chained book in today’s world.
Yet it’s not heresy to feel a yearning for a hushed cathedral of knowledge, where the outside world is kept at bay. When the only choice you have to make is which four books you’ll check out, your brain can settle into the sort of decision-making it likes. So, let the rain patter down outside, as you pluck a book from the shelf and curl up in the big armchair at the end of the library. For an hour or two, you’re unavailable. And that, in today’s world, is a blessing indeed.
Words: Stephanie Lam
Turn over for more on what makes the perfect library
