Stephen McGinty: Libraries survive on borrowed time

Yes, the public library, that tranquil island of learning, amusement and entertainment where upon joining as a child the stacks rise up like cliff-faces, only to shrink over the proceeding years. Where the rite of passage for every literate book worm was marked by the solemn transfer of library tickets from childish green to stern blue and an elevation from three titles per visit to seven. At least that is what I recall was permitted in the great Victorian stone edifice of Clydebank public library.

It is now 157 years since the Public Library Act of 1850 was extended to Scotland and required that local authorities make ample provision of access to books, maps and tools of learning. So it is as good as any point to take stock.

While the public library had its antecedents in Rome, where free reading material was available in the dry rooms of public baths, the modern library as we know and love was born out of fear of revolution.

In the first half of the 19th century, as mechanisation elevated the working class from purely subsistence toil and introduced the novelty of leisure time, there were concerns lest it be spent either in drunkenness or revolutionary plotting.

Better instead, thought the more enlightened politicians, that this time be spent in self-improvement, the great engine of the early Victorian era.

Yet there were those who feared that the public library would only increase the threat of revolution. For as one Conservative MP argued in opposition to the passage of the 1850 Public Libraries Act: "People have too much knowledge already, it was much easier to manage them 20 years ago; the more education people get the more difficult they are to manage." Thankfully, his opinion was in a minority.

Now, it would be easy to link that quote from a Conservative MP of 1850 to the Tory-led cuts of today which threaten, we are told, 600 public libraries across Britain, according to recent reports.

Last Saturday, a group of 100 librarians, members of the public and writers including Julia Donaldson, author of The Gruffalo protested outside the Scottish Parliament at the threatened loss of such a precious local resource.The shuttering of these palaces of learning was a source of understandable outrage to anyone aware of the inscription once chiselled above the entrance to the Library at Thebes - for what are our local libraries if not a dispensary of "medicine for the soul"?

And, if so, who among us would not support their noble campaign? But as it has now emerged Scotland's libraries have been exceedingly lucky.

If you had read the reports of 600 library closures nationwide, you might have assumed that given our percentage of the population we might have lost around 60.

Instead, it now appears that Scotland as a whole will, for now, lose just ten: three in North Ayrshire, three in Argyll and Bute, as well as a land-based mobile library, and three in West Dunbartonshire.

If you also take into account the dozen libraries the nation has lost in the past decade, we will have lost a total of 22 taking us from 554 to 532 - or a cut of just 4 per cent.

To the dedicated library user greeted by a shuttered grill each closure is a severe blow, especially to the elderly and those on low or little income.

But the fact remains that a cold-hearted examination of the figures reveals that it could (and those with no love of books may feel it probably should) have been a good deal worse.

The harsh fact is we do not care about our libraries, regardless of what we may say in surveys.

Only 20 per cent of us are regular users, while 60 per cent step in but once a year, which leaves 40 per cent who completely ignore a service, for which we each pay 21.90 in taxes per annum. When we do step into a library we are borrowing fewerr books. In 1979, the British public borrowed two and half times as many books as they actually bought.

Today, thanks to discounted prices and increased availability, we now buy as many books as we borrow.

In Scotland, over the past decade the number of books borrowed by Scots has plummeted by 27 per cent. Part of the reason for this is that libraries have allowed their stocks to deteriorate as they do not spend enough money on a wide selection of titles.

The annual sum spent on Scotland's public libraries is 109 million, of which just 8.6m, or less than eight per cent is spent on books.

In 2005, Tim Coates conducted an in-depth report into Britain's libraries, which revealed that a customer had only a 50 per cent chance of finding his desired title.

What is interesting is that according to Mr Coates' analysis, Britain's libraries had dropped in usage by 21 per cent, the number of books borrowed had fallen by 35 per cent, while the cost of providing this service, which few people were using, had risen by 39 per cent.If this is accurate, and given the fact that we are in the worst financial climate for the public services in 40 years, for Scotland's libraries to escape this year with a cut of just 2 per cent is little short of miraculous.

Sadly, if a plebiscite was taken more people would probably rather their bins were collected with increased frequency over the retention of that building with books whose threshhold they haven't crossed in decades.

Yet, what is curious is that according to the most recent figures by the Scottish branch of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, visits to Scotland's libraries over the past decade has actually risen by one million to 29.9m, thus bucking the national trend.

We cannot over estimate the importance of the local library as a hub of learning and an access point to free internet and computer access.

I write this, not as an advocate of closure, but to alert the apathetic to the genuine argument available to those whose hearts don't beat to the riffle of a book's pages.

My fourth book is to be published in May and I yet hope in years to come to find it on a dusty library shelf, ignored by the masses, but available to that solitary and curious individual.

For the fact remains Scotland's libraries dodged a bullet this time.

They may not be so fortunate in the future. If we do not use them , we will surely lose them.

Herbert Samuel described a library as "thought in cold storage". It may yet get chillier still.