Saturday 5th February 2011 - National Save Our Libraries Day

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past twelve months, you must know seismic changes are happening in the UK. Funding is being cut everywhere and nowhere more painfully than at local government level, which means Councillors are looking around for soft targets. Up and down the country, they seem to think they've found one: Libraries.

"They're out date," the Councillors argue. "People can buy books from Amazon, they don't need to go out to borrow a dirty, well thumbed book from a musty old library."

I beg to differ and here's why; when I was growing up, my family didn't have much cash. I didn't have the latest trainers or holidays or CDs. But before you go feeling sorry for me, let me tell you that I consider myself pretty lucky, because within a five minute walk of my house, I had a library. It was vast and well stocked. I spent hours browsing the shelves within its safe walls, feeding my love of stories. When I was done, I would take my selection to the desk and head for home, to immerse myself in whatever worlds I'd chosen. Sometimes, I would read all the books I'd borrowed in a day and would go back to the library in the afternoon to choose more, much to the disapproval of the librarian.

I've said before (to anyone who will listen, in fact),that without my lovely local library, I wouldn't be an author. I firmly believe that the choice and availability of those books to a poor-ish girl made me the over-imaginative, widely read woman I am now. So I am passionately opposed to the cutting of library services. I think it undermines everything a civilised society strives for. If the Councillors take away the possibility of access these vast repositories of knowledge and dreams, how will they replace them? How can an enquiring reader decide whether to try a new author if they are forced to invest upwards of £5.00 every time? And even if they can afford the price of the book, won't they go for a tried and trusted author instead of experimenting with someone new? In these days of piracy (by which I don't mean the saucy Captain Jack Sparrow kind), closing libraries means pushing the technologically minded toward illegal downloads, which means authors will not earn anything from writing and will have to work at other jobs to make ends meet - writing less. I know how hard that is; between writing and my day job, I work two full time, demanding careers. Maybe some writers will even give up and I don't have to spell out what a loss that would be.

My local library offers so much. There's a great choice of books, magazines and newspapers. They offer basic computing classes and story-telling groups for under-fives. I went there when I was researching my first picture book and was amazed by the community spirit there was, something I'd forgotten about. Maybe they could do more to be current and appeal to more people but how are they supposed to know unless we, the customer, tell them what we want?

Libraries are an invaluable national institution. Show your support for yours and pop along this week - you can find out other ways to help in the battle for libraries here. I've blogged, tweeted and mentioned Save Our Libraries Day on Facebook. Today, I'll be visiting, to remind myself where I came from.