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I AM, I suppose a book worm; I’ve been that
way since I first found that the character motivation, pace and plot of
the tale concerning the cat that sat on the mat had come up to scratch.
I have gone on paginal pilgrimages among literary giants. Night’s
candles have burned out and jocund day has seen me still journeying from
Golding, Gorki to Gogol, from Blyton, Bennet, Bellow and beyond, while
Haggard is what I have become after storming Kipling’s barrack-room
bastions.
Sometimes, I sit in my little grey home in Edinburgh South and
browse over a gripping, fast-action chapter or two of Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus by Luddy Wittgenstein or, maybe, if I want a few
laughs, something - say Towards a Genealogy of Morals by that old
reliable, Freddy Nietzsche. You never lose the plot with the genial old
Jerry.
If nothing else is available, I will curl up, with an out-of-date
Edinburgh street directory, or a list of vital ingredients on a sauce
bottle label.
Books are my main reading material, and I am with Robert Louis
Stevenson who wrote: "We should gloat over a book, be wrapt clean out of
ourselves and rise from the perusal, our minds filled with the busiest
kaleidoscopic dance of images. The words, if the book be eloquent,
should run thenceforward in our ears like the noise of breakers and the
story repeat itself in a thousand coloured pictures to the eye."
While I have more than 4,000 books scattered on shelves and
various strategic areas of my house, I am also an enthusiastic public
library borrower. I am particularly fond of my local branch, staffed by
cheerful, informative and helpful assistants who, if I had a sudden
yearning for a paperback edition of The Domesday Book, would search for
it without a tremor.
I have been a member of Edinburgh’s excellent public libraries
since around the time Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan was setting up his
1930s film jungle business with branches everywhere. The children’s lib-rary
was then in the George IV Bridge Central Library building where the Fine
Arts section is now. It was an enclave of wooden tables and chairs with
shelves stocked with books from fairy tales to the best of classical
literature deemed suitable for moulding the minds of those whose tastes
would be exposed to literary landscapes from Mother Goose to Lady, Don’t
Fall Backwards.
Then, under the librarian’s stern but just eye, children were
expected to read, mark and inwardly digest books and not shatter the
monastic calm by larking around. Offenders who ignored rowdy behaviour
warnings were told to leave, Biggles unopened and Tarka the Otter
untouched.
How different from today when branch libraries are often the
scene of unchecked-by-parents, rampaging children and where once
studious quietness has been shattered and replaced by sounds suggesting
a zoo’s feeding time. Old age pensioners in groups can also be noisy and
when children are in full babble and wrinklies at top bellow, a reader
who is grappling with Freud while trying to be Jung at heart, can find
concentration difficult.
Still, public libraries are great places and we are lucky to have
them but, according to a recent report by the Audit Commission, those in
England and Wales are in serious decline, with visits to them falling by
17 per cent in the past ten years, book loans dropping by a quarter and
23 per cent fewer people using libraries for borrowing compared with
three years ago. Among reasons for the decline are that buying books has
become more popular and the internet is replacing libraries as
information source.
In Scotland, book-issue figures were also down with 43,605,353 in
1997-98 compared with 38,724,000 in 1999-2000 and later figures are also
believed to be downwards. Library visits have, however, increased in
these periods from 30,457,557 to 30,761,505.
Library officials who believe that information technology brought
more people into libraries, have revealed plans to equip all of
Edinburgh’s ones with computers and free access to the internet. Also
planned is a pilot scheme involving three libraries for Saturday and
Sunday afternoon openings.
Great stuff. I understand that, despite receiving the latest
technological equipment, books will remain the core concern of Scottish
libraries. As a bookworm who only wants to read in quietness, I rejoice
to hear it. |
