Save Our Libraries: Why the Most Important Free Building in Your Town Needs You to Walk Through Its Doors

By Chris Livemore

For the last year or so, my wife and I try and take our children to the local library before their weekly swimming lesson. And each week they disappear into the picture book shelves within about thirty seconds, foraging for the good stuff! Usually one comes back carrying a book about dragons or knights (don't know where that influence comes from!) and the other somehow finds a book about sharks the size of a small bus.

They disappear again and come back carrying more books than a 2 1/2 and 5-year old should physically be able to carry. All of those books come home with us and up next to their beds ready for bedtime.

Whenever we go to a library, we always stay far longer than we plan. Now this is a really important part to note for any parent - a library seems to have some magical ability to keep a small child quiet for at least 45-minutes and so far there has not been a single request for a screen (even after they get home from the library, they are too immersed in the books they have discovered to even think about what Peppa and George might be up to.

Yet, somewhere between the rise of streaming services, the convenience of next-day book delivery and the demands of modern life, a significant number of us have stopped going.

This is a huge mistake. And the consequences are becoming impossible to ignore.

The quiet disappearance

Since 2010, more than 800 public libraries have closed or been transferred away from council-run services. That is not a typo. 800 buildings, each one a free community resource, each one a place where anyone could walk in regardless of income, age or background, quietly shut their doors.

That's 800 learning opportunities gone from communities.

The libraries that remain are under sustained funding pressure. Local authority budgets have been squeezed for over a decade and libraries, which are a statutory service but not an emergency one, have consistently found themselves in the firing line when savings need to be found. Opening hours have been cut. Staff numbers have been reduced. Mobile library services, which reach elderly and rural communities who cannot travel to a building, have declined from 94 in 2010 to fewer than 70 today.

This is happening gradually enough that most people haven't noticed. And that is precisely the problem.

The numbers worth knowing

There are around 3,000 public libraries in England, with most people living surprisingly close to a public library - 78% live within a 30-minute walk - yet many rarely visit and this wonderful free resource is being significantly underused up and down the country.

A National Literacy Trust survey found that 41% of parents said there was no quiet space for children to read at home, while nearly 30% reported borrowing more children's books from libraries as the cost of living increased. The library is not a nostalgic luxury. For a significant number of families it is a practical necessity, and for all families it is a genuine asset that disappears quietly when we stop using it.

Here is the thing about libraries that most people don't realise. They are a statutory service, which means councils are legally required to provide them. But the law says nothing about how many, how well-funded, or how many hours they must be open. The decisions that determine whether your local library is a thriving community hub or a half-empty room open three days a week are made in budget meetings that nobody attends, based partly on data about footfall that nobody is generating because nobody is visiting.

Every visit is a vote for its continued existence. Every child who leaves with a book under their arm is an argument that the library is earning its place in the community budget.

Why the library is different from buying books

This is not an argument against buying books. I am trying to write books. I would like people to buy them. Buying books is wonderful and I encourage it enthusiastically.

But the library offers something purchasing cannot.

It offers unlimited discovery at zero financial risk (unless maybe if you forget to return a book for several years!). A child who picks up a book they've never heard of, from a shelf they wandered past, written by an author they didn't know existed, and finds it is the best thing they've ever read, has had an experience that no algorithm could have delivered and no recommendation engine would have surfaced.

The library's great gift is the unexpected find, a gem that you might never have considered purchasing in a bookshop. The book that changes everything, discovered entirely by accident between the returns trolley and the picture book section.

It also offers something more important than any individual book: the physical experience of being in a place where reading is what everyone is doing. For a child who sees reading as a chore, spending an hour in a building where every person present has chosen to be there specifically to engage with books and ideas can be quietly transformative. You are not being told that reading matters. You are being shown.

Libraries let children become explorers

One of the joys of taking children to the library is that they don't choose books the way adults do.

Adults arrive with a title in mind. Children arrive with curiosity. They pick up books because the dragon looks funny, or they like the look of a random fruit with funny shaped eyes. Or because a bright pink dinosaur is, well, bright pink.

Sometimes they'll borrow a book about volcanoes, then spend the next fortnight asking questions about lava at breakfast. That's exactly how reading habits begin. Not by telling children what they ought to read, but by letting them discover what fascinates them.

What modern libraries actually offer

The modern library is not, as some people still imagine, a hushed room of disapproving adults and towering shelves. Libraries in the UK have evolved into dynamic community hubs that host story times, rhyme sessions for babies, homework clubs, digital skills workshops, author events and school holiday activity programmes.

Research published in BMC Public Health found that libraries are considered a safe place by members of the community regardless of how frequently they use the service. They are warm spaces for the elderly who might otherwise spend a day alone. They are study spaces for students who cannot concentrate at home. They are free internet access for families who cannot afford broadband. They are, in the most straightforward sense, one of the last genuinely free, genuinely open, genuinely welcoming public spaces we have.

Many libraries now also lend eBooks, audiobooks, magazines, board games and even musical instruments or tools, depending on the local authority. It is a true community resource!

Thousands of children attend schools with limited or no dedicated library provision, making the public library more important than ever. This is especially relevant today given the awful budgetary constraints our schools are under. Which means the public library is, for a significant number of children, the only library they have access to at all.

What you can actually do

The case for supporting libraries is not sentimental. It is practical. Use it or lose it is not a slogan. It is how local authority funding decisions work. Here is how you can make a difference.

Visit regularly, not just occasionally. Make it a family habit. A library that records consistent footfall is a library that can argue for its budget. Monthly visits from your family are worth more to the funding argument than one annual trip.

Join as a member if you aren't already. Membership numbers are reported to local authorities and matter to funding decisions. It takes five minutes and costs nothing.

Request books you want. Most library services will order books on request, and every request is a data point that helps librarians argue for their acquisitions budget. If your child loves a particular author and the library doesn't have their newest book, ask. The answer is usually yes.

Attend events. Story time sessions, author visits, holiday programmes, attendance figures for these events are among the most persuasive data points a library can present to a budget committee. Showing up matters even when you don't strictly need to be there.

Tell people about it. The single most effective advocacy for your local library is personal recommendation. If a friend mentions they're looking for something to do with their children on a rainy Wednesday morning, mention the library - most run coffee mornings!

Seriously, what is better than quiet children and caffeine!?

Pillars of the community - let's help them!

The library exists because communities decided, at some point in the past, that access to books and knowledge should not depend on the ability to pay for them. It creates a free learning resource, a space for communities to visit and enjoy. But it is a funding decision that gets re-made, or quietly unmade, every year, in every local authority budget meeting, based partly on how many people are using the service.

So, take your child to the library this week. Stay for story time if there is one. Let your child wander the shelves and pick something entirely on their own instincts. Sit in a chair and read something yourself while they do.

And on your way out, check the noticeboard. Find out when the next event is. Put it in the diary.

The building will still be there next week if you do.

It may not be if you don't. It is that serious.

Next time: Jack's Reading List, our regular series of rhyming, funny read-aloud picture books that will tide you over until The Good Knight arrives. First instalment coming soon.

Join the Shield Wall at thegoodknightbook.com/shield-wall for updates, medieval history, dad reading tips and the occasional medieval insult.