In Defence of Birmingham's Libraries

Thanks to years of Tory government cuts and hopeless Labour council mismanagement, Birmingham City Council, the second biggest in the country, declared itself bankrupt last year. Of course, part of their plan to get themselves out of the mire is to shut most of the local libraries.

I grew up in Birmingham, and I always say that Sutton Coldfield Library was my real school. I went there with my parents and grandparents from a young age. By the time I was 11 and allowed out on my own, the library was one of my favourite places to go. By the time I left school, I was going there at least twice a week, and at one point in my early twenties, I think I went there pretty much every day.

For years, the main thing I went for was music. For about 50p, you could borrow a CD or cassette for a fortnight (in the mid-Nineties, they still had a decent selection of vinyl too). This was in the pre-streaming, even pre-Napster, world where CD albums cost anything up to £16 in HMV or Virgin. It’s thanks to Sutton Library that I first heard Sgt Pepper, Abbey Road, Ziggy Stardust, A Love Supreme, Bitches Brew, Forever Changes, Unknown Pleasures, The Holy Bible, and more. Some, such as Boards of Canada’s Geogaddi literally changed my life. I was able to immerse myself in all kinds of rock, reggae, jazz (the guy who ran the music library at the time was a big jazz freak, so the selection was very comprehensive), soul, classical, psychedelia, and African music. Things that I would have had no access to otherwise.

As time went by and I started learning to play guitar, I started hiring out sheet music and chord books by the armful too. It was from a Kinks songbook borrowed from Sutton Library that I learned my first two or three chords. I taught myself piano and the rudiments of harmony using books from there too.

And of course there were the other books: fiction, non-fiction, autobiographies, poems, plays, literary criticism. It was all there, free to discover on the most random of whims. Most of my random whims were related to my hero at the time, Paul Weller. I freely admit I would practically run to the library to investigate any author or poet he referenced, however fleetingly. When I saw a snippet of Wilfred Owen’s ‘The Roads Also’ on the cover of Stanley Road, I went and borrowed Owen’s works from the library (the start of a love affair with his poetry that continues over 25 years later). I also found the same edition of Shelley’s poetry as the one seen on the cover of The Style Council’s Our Favourite Shop; I read a hardback copy of Colin MacInnes’ Absolute Beginners (a huge influence on Weller in the early Eighties); I borrowed battered Methuen copies of Joe Orton’s plays when I was 13 and couldn’t make head nor tail of them.

But the library wasn’t just somewhere for me to access things my influences liked; it was an influence itself: the spinning racks of cool-looking Penguin Classics with the pale green spines, written by foreign authors I’d never heard of; the old hardback editions of Shakespeare; the shelves of music biographies; the small but significant local history section, from which I borrowed Douglas V. Jones’ books on Sutton Coldfield’s history and began seeing the town in a whole new light as a result.

So many life-shaping books and records, and all either free or very, very cheap. No one rushing or jostling you to buy. No in-store radio or blaring music. Absolute bliss.

Yes, we live in a very different world now. There is the internet. You can stream as much music as you want now—way more than any physical library could hold. You can learn about almost anything through YouTube documentaries. I’m not saying that libraries do not have to change to keep up; they do and they have. Nowadays, when I go into any library, there are more computers than ever so that those without internet access at home can get it. There are more and more community events: knit-and-natters, board game afternoons, craft clubs, local history groups, etc. You can rent digital audiobooks as well as physical ones.

And of course, there’s still access to physical literature, whether its large-print crime and romance novels, new writers, classics, or history books. In my late-twenties, I went through a phase of working in a job I hated for barely enough money to pay the bills. The nearby library, although much smaller than Sutton, became a haven, somewhere I could escape for ten minutes and browse the shelves, knowing that I could actually have whatever I wanted without thinking about money. I could then get further mental respite by losing myself in the books I borrowed (I vividly remember borrowing Roddy Doyle’s Paula Spencer).

Since becoming a dad, I’ve regularly taken my daughter to the library, and she loves looking through and choosing a load of books to bring home and read, free to discover the kinds of authors and books she likes and doesn’t like, loving taking part in the reading challenges that our local library sets during the school holidays.

Libraries are still relevant. They function as free and open community spaces for ALL. For kids, parents, senior citizens, the poor, the rich. None of it matters in a library. The space and its contents are yours to freely use if you want. In a world where everything is becoming so controlled, so expensive, so loud, and so fast, libraries are as necessary as ever. They should not be taken away from anyone because councils can’t add up properly. If anything, a trip to the library would probably help them.