THE IMPORTANCE OF LIBRARIES

My daughter Poppy and I go to our local library at least twice a month. On her ticket, she’s allowed to get out 20 books – so that is how many we get, almost every time. Yes, 20 books at a time. And whyever not? We read with Poppy every bedtime, we write what we’ve read in her school Reading Record; she reads to us, we read to her and we get through at least 2 books a night. We need 20 books at a time to keep her going for the next 2 weeks or so! When we’re in the library, we have fun colouring with the crayons and paper the librarians leave out for us. We browse for fiction books, non-fiction books and talking books. We buy old stock for pennies – old scrappy books which the library can’t use any more, but we can! Some of Poppy’s favourites are the CDs we bought for 50p each, such as ‘Helping Hercules’ by Francesca Simon and ‘Double Act’ by Jacqueline Wilson. With her Reading World scheme, we can get out a DVD for a week for free. Our own favourite is a crazy old cartoon of ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ voiced by Burgess Meredith (you know, the Penguin in Batman!) – you can’t buy this for less than £70 on Amazon! (Don’t ask me why, but I have to say, it is a surrealist masterpiece.) But our local library has a copy, and we love it.

And it’s not just for Poppy. When I’m researching a new novel, I can’t afford to buy every non-fiction book I need; I often use library books to support my research. And I can’t afford to buy new hardback novels I’d like to read, so I get them out of the library instead. The author gets some remuneration for this through the PLR scheme too, so everyone’s a winner.

We shop around, Poppy, Simon & I – we have a library just up the road, but when we are out and about we go into the other 3 libraries we have hereabouts and always find completely different stock and collections to enjoy. No single local library or van could possibly hold so much stock, or possibly be local to everyone.

We need our libraries, all of them. We love our libraries, all of them. And we don’t want them to close.

If you agree with me, that libraries are important, please check out the Save Lincolnshire Libraries campaign.

See their website here:

http://savelincslibraries.org.uk/about-campaign/

and sign any petition you can to support this and any other local libraries campaign.