Sunday 13 April 2014

The Touring Guide To Headingley Library

It was a pleasure to visit libraries. It was a special pleasure to step through the door and find books, local information, book groups, information technology, children's reading area. Headingley Library is a good place to visit.

This was supposed to be a quick visit, drop off two books that were finished and near their return dates. Still, a little look around wouldn't harm. Thirty minutes later, one near collision with a fellow library user (his fault, I was looking in horror as he walked backwards from science fiction) and a librarian asking my wife if she writes books herself later, and I have two new books borrowed. One a sci-fi novel based in the Warhammer 40K universe, Deathwatch by Steve Parker (kind of like who watches the detectives, the detectives being aliens, sorry, xenos). The other a travel guide.

Libraries are important. Libraries are not just about books* and Headingley Library demonstrates this in abundance. There is a children's area where books are read out aloud, and the aforementioned information technology. Headingley also has a travel section, and among the far-flung parts of the world I found The Country Living's Travel Guide to the North East. This book is not perfect, it doesn't seem to do cafés and was published in 2010, but like most travel guides it is useful. Over Easter we will be wandering around Hadrian's Wall, and there's a few points of interest.

That said, I do not think I am a typical reader of Country Living. Try as I might I can't find an entry for Durham's People's Bookshop in the guide. A secondhand bookshop promising to fill the gaps left behind in the headlong rush for bestsellers. I found them on the internet and can't wait to visit.

*Anyone who argues libraries are only 'about books' has, in my view, not stepped in a library for quite some time. Either that or they have an ideological reason for not acknowledging the community and civic roles libraries play, or the personal need for them. If someone tells you libraries are useless and expensive wastes of money ask them about the last time they made personal use of a naval warship or air force bomber.

Postscript. It is a pleasure to reread Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. If I were to travel America reciting a book I would attempt to memorise Richard Brautigan's Sombrero Fallout.

Second Postscript. Rereading through my draft of this post made me remember something that happened near the Kirkstall mobile library in Spring 2013. While checking out our books some university-age men walked passed the entrance they shouted "libraries are gay". These were not children, grown adults whose education has at some point relied on a library. So, next time someone tells you that, say they are wrong both about libraries and for using sexuality as a derogatory term.

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