(Profile Books, 2012)
Books and stories are lifelines, and libraries house those lifelines, making them available to all.
(Foreword by Rebecca Gray, vii)
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To reduce a library to simple architecture, bricks and mortar is a mistake. Similarly, to suggest a library is defined by the books on the shelf is erroneous. Libraries are very special spaces, spaces where people come together in separate but joint pursuits of knowledge.
(p. 20, Hardeep Singh Kohli)
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A bookshelf is s particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
(p. 39, Alan Bennett)
A library needs to be handy and local; it shouldn’t require an expedition.
(p. 42, Alan Bennett)
For a child a library needs to be round the corner. And if we lose local libraries it is children who will suffer.
(p. 42, Alan Bennett)
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The librarian isn’t a clerk who happens to work at a library. A librarian is a data hound, a guide, a sherpa and a teacher. The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user.
(p. 45, Seth Godin)
Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever ebook lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending library as warehouse as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher and impresario.
(p. 47, Seth Godin)
Just in time for the information economy, the library ought to be the local nerve centre for information.
(pp. 47-48, Seth Godin)
The next library is filled with so many web terminals there’s always at least one empty. And the people who run this library don’t view the combination of access to data and connections to peers as a sidelight - it’s the entire pint.
(p. 48, Seth Godin)
We need librarians more than we ever did. What we don’t need are mere clerks who guard dead paper.
(p. 49, Seth Godin)
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I read voraciously, diving into the worlds of other people’s imagination and emerging with my own vision enriched and inflamed.
(p. 52-53, Val McDermid)
Being a reader turned me into a writer. It fed my imagination and revealed worlds far beyond my own experience.
(p. 56, Val McDermid)
♦
The great unsold truth of libraries is that people need them not because they’re about study and solitude, but because they’re about connection. Connection with other worlds and different views even if that’s no more than being among other people thinking and breathing.
(p. 76, Bella Bathurst)
Because they provide a haven and because they don’t discriminate about who they admit, libraries can often end up attracting problems.
(p. 77, Bella Bathurst)
I always have a sense of trepidation when I open a book, because when you start reading you’re giving yourself over to it, entering another person’s world, opening yourself up. It’s a relationship, and like any relationship, it can also make you feel guilty or resentful or happy or relieved.
(p. 82, Bell Bathurst)
People can be changed by books, and that’s scary.
(p. 82, Bella Bathurst)
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A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit a life raft and a festival They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination.
(p. 92, Caitlin Moran)
A library is where the wealthy’s taxes pay for you to become a little more extraordinary instead. A satisfying reversal. A balancing of the power.
(p.93, Caitlin Moran)
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… the library has never existed that was not shadowed by an apprehension of its own mortality.
(p. 96, Tom Holland)
Right from the very beginning, then , it seems libraries have embodied a certain paradox: that conservation and ruin can be sides of the same coin.
(p. 98, Tom Holland)
A civilization must be judged as well by the books it keeps in institutions far removed from the centres of power.
Its very survival, after all, may ultimately depend upon it.
(p. 107, Tom Holland)
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There is little that can compare with the joy and value of discovering a book that you could only have come across by being in the same physical space.
(p. 116, Michael Brooks)
Far be it from me to discourage people from reading new books, but I can’t help thinking there’s still an awful lot we can learn from the old ones.
(p. 118, Michael Brooks)
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There’s a direct correlation between success and reading for pleasure.
(p. 122, Bali Rai)
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Those people who grew up with shelves of their own books missed out on the pleasure of communal reading, of discussing and sharing, of discovery in a public space.
(p. 126, Ann Cleeves)
Most libraries now host reading groups. They are safe and democratic spaces for people to come together.
(p.127, Ann Cleeves)
Some say that the internet has taken the place of the library. We can browse the web, read bookish blogs, tweet bookish tweets. But we can’t pick up the book. We can’t take it away and read it for free. And there’s something sadly solitary and second-hand about the electronic experience of choosing books.
(p. 128, Ann Cleeves)
Reading isn’t in competition with the other arts; it’s essential to their understanding.
(p. 128, Ann Cleeves)
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Ideas don’t come from somewhere mysterious and magical. They come from a blank page or screen, a willingness to sit along for hours and spend time in your own head, a desire to make something where there was once nothing.
(p. 134, Julie Myerson)
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One of the most amazing things about public libraries remains their utter classlessness.
(p. 138, Nicky Wire)
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Pretty much the only place my parents’ marriage could be considered a match made in heaven was on their bookshelves.
(p. 140, Zadie Smith)
To go somewhere to study, because you have chosen to, with no adult looking over your shoulder and only other students for support and company …
(p. 141, Zadie Smith)
There’s no point in goofing off in a library: you’re acutely aware that the only person’s time you’re wasting is your own.
(p. 141, Zadie Smith)
Local libraries are gateways - not only to other libraries, but to other lives.
(p. 143, Zadie Smith)
Despite the many wonders of the internet, you might suddenly long for the smell of old books.
(p. 145, Zadie Smith)
Community is a partnership between government and the people, and it is depressing to hear the language of community - the so-called ‘Big Society’ - being used to disguise the low motives of one side of that partnership as it attempts to worm out of the deal.
(p. 145, Zadie Smith)
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Reading is not just an escape. It is access to a better way of life.
(p. 166, Karin Slaughter)
I think the need for reading boils down to one simple issue: children are selfish. Reading about other people creates a sense of balance in a child’s life. It gives them the knowledge that there is a world outside themselves. It tells them that the language they are learning at home is the key to unlocking the mysteries of the greater world.
(p. 166, Karin Slaughter)
Fundamentally, reading creates better societies. This is not a theory. This is a quantifiable fact: there is a direct correlation between the rate of literacy in a nation and its success.
(p. 166, Karin Slaughter)
The funding of libraries should be a matter of national security. Keeping libraries open, giving access to all children to all books is vital to our nation’s sovereignty.
(p. 167, Karin Slaughter)
We need to shift our national view of libraries not as luxuries, but as necessities.
(p. 167, Karin Slaughter)