The 21st-century argument against this great public service was inconvenience. Yet the New York Public Library demonstrates this is no longer the caseI rejoined the library this week,five years after my membership lapsed and without any great expectation I would employ it. The public library is the only thing in my neighbourhood that is free, and it looks that way: dowdy, and with grey carpet,half-empty fiction shelves and a librarian who is not in the trade of wishing anyone a kind day. When you listen closely, the silence of the reading room is actually white noise produced by half a dozen nervous people rustling in their seats.
I’d forgotten about the effect of all of this, or how wonderfully and militantly library culture stands out against every other service in the neighbourhood; how mind-blowing it is to walk into a situation and not be beamed at by a maniac or asked to grasp part in a commercial transaction.
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Source: theguardian.com