Global View: Why libraries are vital for communities,and why censorship should be left at the door

Participants at The Cat That Never Sleeps, an event held at the Václav Havel Library in Prague. As well as holding a huge collection of archive material by Vaclav Havel, the library hosts numerous events

Credit:Vaclav Havel Library / Ondrej Nemec

Libraries are an incredible resource for communities, for increasing knowledge and for freedom of expression. They are needed for the future as much as the past, argues Jodie Ginsberg

I WAS SITTING IN a library when I first had a discussion – via email – about the possibility of working for Index. I was in the biographies section, researching a paper on payments systems (there were no seats in the finance section), when an email pinged into my inbox asking if I might be interested in applying for a new job. I looked up from my computer and instantly spotted a biography of someone with the same name as the man who had just written to me. It’s not a common surname. It felt like an omen.

Libraries do that. They exert a very special kind of magic. As a child, I think it was a combination of the silence and the feeling of being on a constant treasure hunt that made a visit to the library so special. As an adult, it was the mystery of wandering along dimly lit corridors in buildings that felt like labyrinths. Libraries hold out the magic of discovery: new writers, new pictures, new worlds. Digital databases cannot replicate the excitement of uncovering something special, such as the two pages from the Koran, thought to be more than 1,400 years old and found hidden in a book in the University of Birmingham’s library in July.

Our library at Index is much smaller and takes up just one wall (although we’re running out of shelves), but treasures still occasionally tumble from the pages of our archived magazines: notes from former editors, a copy signed by writer and former president of Czechoslovakia Václav Havel, a letter from playwright Alan Bennett, photographs from the film premiere of Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden, which was held as an Index fundraiser. So far, no great undiscovered manuscripts have been unearthed but we live in hope.

Libraries offer the possibility of discovery for many reasons, not least because they should be places where censorship is left at the door. Sadly, this is not always the case.

The American Library Association estimates that around 300 books are removed or challenged in US schools and libraries every year – although this is likely to be only a fraction of the total as many book bans are never reported. It is vital that as libraries adapt and change, resistance to censorship remains at the heart of their mission.

Because libraries are changing. These are no longer just hallowed halls of quiet study. They are also increasingly becoming places where individuals come to share knowledge, to discuss it, to question it, and to celebrate it. The British Library received criticism recently for redeveloping its space and becoming more like a giant “students’ union”. Instead of having the intimidating entrance halls of many great libraries, the redesigned British Library now offers sofas and free Wi-Fi to reflect the changing needs of readers.

The British Council, after a long period of closing down its libraries, is building new ones in south Asia, recognising that the libraries are not just important repositories of knowledge, but also offer rare spaces for individuals to meet and discuss books and ideas in an apolitical space. “Libraries have always been at the heart of the communities they serve,” the British Council’s Tomas Doherty wrote ahead of the reopening of the British Council library in Dhaka last year. It’s a view echoed by author Joanne Harris, who has written of libraries as “a civic space that bind communities” and called for more public money to be spent on them.

According to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, there are more than 320,000 libraries worldwide, 73 per cent of them in developing and transitioning countries. As the organisation notes, in many communities, public libraries are the only place where any person, regardless of education or skill level, can have access to information and the internet, free of charge.

The reinvention of libraries is necessary in the face of public funding cuts, but it also reflects a change in behaviour, as people look not just to accumulate knowledge but to share it too. Even the Index library is part of this trend. Our library has hosted dissidents, MPs, authors, illustrators, activists – even parties. It is a place where anyone can talk freely and without fear, where knowledge is shared and discoveries are made. We just need more shelves.

© Jodie Ginsberg