On libraries: a personal history

Libraries make me happy. All libraries.

It doesn’t matter whether I’m entering an all-singing all-dancing architectural marvel, like the DLR Lexicon in Dún Laoghaire, or a fraying nineteenth century building that badly needs replacement. Over the years I have used libraries that were based in a range of places ranging from a small locked cupboard in a school to a world-famous 400-year beauty. But when I step over the threshold into any library, something magical happens: always, a feeling of being at home and at my ease.

Libraries are communal and often democratically open places, places where there is a pleasing common purpose. Despite the arrival of online catalogues, computers and wi-fi, they are still primarily analogue and physical experiences in a world of transient digital life. As such, they were particularly missed during the pandemic. And of course they serve lots of roles beyond book-borrowing and studying - courses, kids’ groups, film shows, hobby clubs, warmth. Even mitching, which of course I don’t recommend: in his book Making Kids Cleverer: a manifesto for closing the advantage gap, David Didau writes about skipping off school as a boy by using his free bus pass to escape into the city:

Where do you go if you’re a 13 year-old with no money in the middle of England’s second biggest city? The library, obviously. Birmingham Central Library was my refuge, my sanctuary and, in some ways, my alma mater. Not only was it warm, but it was big enough that a teenager in school uniform went unnoticed … for some unknowable reason I became a devotee of Russian literature: I read ‘Crime and Punishment’, ‘The Gulag Archipelago’, ‘The Master and Margharita’ and ‘Anna Karenina’. I didn’t understand them all that well - and I certainly didn’t like them all - but I stubbornly ploughed through them, day after day. And no one in the library ever questioned my right to do so.

Whatever other faults Irish society has, despite our economic privilege, there is this one area of life that is flourishing and, frankly, magnificent. Every other week we see reports from our neighbours across the water about the erosion of the public library system there. Well, not here. The Irish library system is thriving. New or superbly refurbished buildings regularly open: see Kinsale, and Kildare, and Naas for a start. Plans are afoot close to me at the Samuel Beckett Civic Centre in Ballyogan for a completely new building. For another example, wait for the end of this post to read about the new Mayfair Library in Kilkenny City, due to open around late March, which carries a very personal connection.

Moreover, in addition to the excellence of the library staff here (I’ve never come across a librarian who is anything other than helpful and pleasant), how amazing is it that we have an online ordering system like we do? You can go online anywhere, find a book that is not in your own library, if currently available order it from another part of the country, and a few days later collect it from your local branch. Amazing. For free! Also, fines for late returns were wisely abolished a few years ago (they don’t encourage returns).

So, a love letter to the libraries throughout my life:

The first: the ur-library, where it all began, was the Carnegie on John’s Quay, Kilkenny. A sturdy compact stone building with windows at the front, flanking pillars at the entrance and a cupola, with views to the Castle and the main city across the River Nore. Over the door, letters cut into the stone: Public - Carnegie - Library. What a legacy Andrew Carnegie left all over the world. First I was brought by my parents, then when older I was allowed to walk on my own along the pedestrian path by the river. When you entered, the children’s room was at the back-left past the desk. In those days of course there was no online catalogue for ordering books from other places, so you made do with what was there, but that was more than enough. The excitement of a book you hadn’t seen before appearing on a shelf or display!

Children’s Room, Carnegie Library, Kilkenny

A couple of years ago I returned, and was delighted to find the layout just the same, the only difference in the children’s room being brighter paint and furniture. Recently, the library’s location has been enhanced by the opening of the lovely new home for the Butler Gallery in the converted Evans Home just behind it.

Next: there was a locked cupboard in my primary school, and once a week a teacher would bring along the key as we queued up to select something, usually an Enid Blyton. The opposite principle to accessibility but on the other hand there was the delicious excitement, the build-up to the day the cupboard was opened.

Next: the cosy room at secondary school, built in 1919 in memory of a war casualty, its walls completely covered in oak shelves, enveloping you with book spines. There were wooden trays of index cards for the catalogue, a pleasing thing now gone from all institutions. The books had been selected by two teachers in turn over many years, both of whom were distinguished intellectuals. So the collection was very highbrow. There were rarely many people working there. Bliss.

Next: university. An embarrassment of riches. The College library was a treat for light studying and dozing before heading off to meet friends at a café; the main university library was one of the most famous in the world; the ‘camera’ reading room for study was inspiring. You could pull out huge volumes from the catalogue, plonk them down on an upright reading stand, and flip over large yellowing pages of glued-in entries.

Next: in the early 90s the school I work in decided to build a new library and study space right in the centre of the campus. Some said this was crazy (constant disturbance) but it was right, a statement of intent. And the architect got it right too. I found myself being its first teacher-librarian, an amateur learning on the job the Dewey system, online cataloguing (sadly, goodbye to the index card trays), how to encourage reading. It was such a pleasure choosing books, and lightly pottering around on occasion during the holidays - not work at all. I moved on to another job after 8 years. Thankfully I did not have to try to combat the current climate of phones and social media, those attention-sinks of teenage life.

[On school libraries: being able to build a library shows that I work in a privileged environment, and it is even better that now we have an expert professional librarian. That option is not available to many schools, and whatever about public provision, schools in this country are not given anything like sufficient funding. In my time as a teacher-librarian the School Library Association, Republic of Ireland (SLARI) did great work; now it’s the School Libraries Group, a subsection of the Library Association of Ireland, properly campaigning for decent resourcing. There are heroic teacher-librarians everywhere who are doing their best, often unpaid. As Philip Pullman wrote the other day,

The school library is absolutely essential at every level of education, and it needs legal protection and status … It is too easy to think that books and reading for pleasure are not essential, whereas nothing is more certain to improve children’s ability – and desire – to read richly and well. It’s also been too easy for some school heads to downgrade the school library into some sort of ‘information centre’, with the focus on computers and technology rather than books.

And he ends:

The library should be the heart, the soul, the mind, the source, the spring, the gold-bearing seam, the engine room, the treasure chamber, the priceless inheritance, the joy and the pride of the school. Every school.]

Next: another shout-out for the magnificent public library system in Ireland. Nowadays my local library is in Ballyroan, South Dublin, beautifully-built in 2013 behind an unlovely shopping centre in the middle of housing estates. Despite continuing to buy plenty of books, and occasionally using a Kindle, I’m there a couple of times a week, often picking up books from that fabulous online system. Last night I finished Sigrid Nunez’s novel The Vulnerables and just before that Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost. The former is stamped as from Cork, the latter Roscommon. They will wend their way back to their respective homes when I drop them in to Ballyroan, and then I imagine them starting on new journeys around the country. Ballyroan is also where I introduced my daughter to the library experience before she started school. She is currently hoovering through the Murder Most Unladylike series by Robin Stevens from her modest school library.

Mayfair Ballroom, 1960s. Photo: Tom Brett

Finally: a library I have not yet visited, since it is not yet finished. The new main city library in Kilkenny is due to open in a couple of months. Last summer on a visit I took a few pictures from outside the construction fence of the Mayfair. The plans look splendid. The Carnegie, my ur-library, will be retained by the service as a local studies centre. When I lived in the city, I walked past this central location every time I went into town. It was once the Mayfair Ballroom and the venue for steamy excitement and romance from its opening in 1943 (clip of a dance in 1951). According to Katharine Blake, its manager said there could be up to 1300 people packed in there on a normal Sunday night. Moreover,

Over the years, the Mayfair played host to a number of well-known American names including Ray Charles, The Everly Brothers, Dusty Springfield, The Tremeloes, Engelbert Humperdink, Chubby Checker and, just months before he was killed in an air crash Jim Reeves played to 1,700 people, the biggest crowd ever seen at the Mayfair.

In 1973 the ballroom was bought by the neighbouring Smithwick’s Brewery as a canteen and event space. Ten years after that my father had his retirement party there. A few days beforehand the brewery had acquired its first video camera, and so I have a scratchy 30-minute film of the event and of my father’s farewell speech, set inside the former ballroom and the future library. When the latter opens I will certainly visit, and once again, in that brand-new library, I will feel right at home, and happy.

Update: April 24th 2024. The Mayfair Library was opened by Minister Heather Humphries today. The pictures look splendid. And to prove my point about the healthy state of the public library system in Ireland, an announcement was also made about a €25 million investment.