| After 14 years of Tory cuts to public funding, libraries have become the answer for many people seeking not just books but children’s activities, language-learning resources, asylum support, or just somewhere to stay warm, Aida Edemariam showed in her recent long read about Britain’s libraries. And libraries themselves have suffered from council cuts, with reports last month that librarians’ jobs could be under threat of being replaced by self-service technology. Novelist Guy Gunaratne thinks the reason people were so quick to respond to the library attack in Liverpool is because when we “see such vulnerable spaces become violently defaced”, it “awakens in us the same human instinct to protect as when seeing vulnerable people beset by mindless violence”. “For a library, particularly one like Spellow Lane which has focused its limited resources on providing for deprived communities, to have become the target of hateful mobs is as heartbreaking as it is outrageous,” Gunaratne adds. The In Our Mad and Furious City author’s local library when growing up in London’s Willesden Green was “the first supportive environment I discovered when making my first steps into literacy,” they say. “Without those quiet corners to read in I would not have become a writer myself.” Children’s author Anne Fine also says she owes her career to libraries: “I couldn’t have had a shadow of the life I’ve had without everything they offer.” “So much of our lives is spent getting and spending,” she adds. “Libraries offer something so much deeper and more enriching. They are the doorway to a fuller life for everyone who uses them, from the pensioner reading one of the free papers, to the refugee getting to grips with a new language, to the toddler enchanted by bright shiny pictures and an engaging story.” Though it is rousing to see so many donate to Spellow Hub at this time of emergency, libraries need more than just protecting, “they deserve more investment”, author and screenwriter Nikesh Shukla thinks. “Libraries provide so many useful services for people, not just offering free access to books. They are important community spaces and pivotal in so many people’s lives.” Gunaratne agrees: “Libraries are for the people. We protect libraries because they are among the only spaces that exist solely to nurture human flourishing.” | 