3 September 2013 saw the
opening of the largest public library in Europe: the new Library of Birmingham.
It has received a good deal of media interest – and rightly so: it’s a splendid
achievement. Its stylish interior is reminiscent of the old British Library
Reading Room, and the building boasts not one but two roof terraces, both of
which give superb views of the city, and provide enticing places to read on
fine days. Have a look for yourself.
This week I was
interviewed about the new building and its place in the history of Birmingham’s
libraries for BBC Midlands Today, and here I set out a few thoughts prompted by
that.
Birmingham’s new
library is a triumph of long-term thinking over short-term cutbacks – and as
such flies in the face of the withering mood that radiates from the present
national administration. That in itself is something to be thankful for.
The poet Roy
Fisher, who was born and raised in the city, once wrote ‘Birmingham’s what I think with’.
Well, a library like this is what the city thinks with. It’s an investment by the people of Birmingham in the people of Birmingham: both a
symbol of self-education – a demotic culture of self-improvement – and
its most practical aid.
Alongside
universities and museums, public libraries remain the guardians of our
collective cultural inheritance – literary and otherwise – and hence a mark of
civilisation itself. That is an ancient and on-going role.
Libraries, however,
are no longer simply the storehouses and lenders of books. This does not mean
the end of print and pages. Books retain significant advantages as a
technology: they don’t need batteries – and they are tactile objects, with an
experiential quiddity of their own. But in addition to that role, the library
is now a meeting-place – a place where things happen, and that makes things
happen – as well as a global junction of information, image, and literature,
through the internet. In the digital age, it is often assumed that we are
gradually doing away with the need to meet, or come together as a community. On
the contrary: one unintended consequence of the digital age has been to confirm
the value of physical presence – what we might call the theatre of space.
The new Library of
Birmingham achieves that sense of theatre, and the possibilities of new contact
– and rightly so, for a library should also be a pleasure-house. Whether its
users are studying alone and quietly, or gathering for a crowded public event,
a library is a realm of the mind, of the imagination, of possibility. Like a
book, a picture, a film or a piece of music, the library itself is an organ of
mental space. It was apt that Malala Yousafzai should have opened the new library: shot by the Taliban for her fearless defence of the right to
education, she now lives in Birmingham, the city where she made her recovery.
As both its defenders and its enemies know, the mental space that a library serves – the realm of
possibility – is the realm of freedom, and of true democracy. Through the
reading mind, a library is somewhere you can go to be free, for free.
For more
reflections on the Library of Birmingham, see the excellent blog by my
colleague at Birmingham City University, Dr Serena Trowbridge.
Finally: don’t
forget that the superb Birmingham Literature Festival (3-12 October 2013)
will be held in the new library itself. See you there.
