As an author, I often have readers apologise to me when they divulge that they borrowed my book from a library. That’s when I tell them about the lending rights scheme, a federal government initiative that pays Australian authors and illustrators a commission every time their book is borrowed.
So if you’re a book borrower, don’t feel guilty. You’re tangibly supporting authors with every loan. And you’re supporting your community by using and bolstering a safe and accessible public space.
In Tasmania the literacy rate is one of the lowest in Australia – just under 50% – and yet our statewide library service is flourishing as it works hard to support all members of society. Beyond the bookshelves and photocopiers (usually fickle) are gathering spaces; a half-finished puzzle is a magnet for those with time on their hands, men sit in armchairs reading newspapers, feet shuffle and fingers type.
I’ve always owned a library card. Some of my earliest memories are cemented in the sunny corners of my childhood library. In an effort to get us out of the house while my mum slept after night shift, my dad would take my brother and I straight to the library and we’d return home hours later, arms full of books.
My primary school librarian, Mrs MacGuiness, was my hero (my very own Miss Honey). Her glasses were always perched on the end of her nose and her laugh was loud enough to echo out the door and down the hallways. She was big-hearted and big-bosomed; she wouldn’t put up with any shit in her domain but she loved literature and encouraged her students to love it, too.
My love of libraries shifted when I became a mother because “sing, read and rhyme” time was the routine I needed when everything else felt uncertain. I was comforted by the established mothers who exuded maternal ease and sat beside me in the circle, their smiles the gentle reassurance I needed at a time when I was mostly untethered.
The same librarians I grew up knowing were the ones who sang Open Shut Them to my first born; they had been a mainstay in my childhood reading journey and now they were making my baby smile.
It was years later, when my partner and I decided to sell most of what we owned and travel Australia in a caravan, that I saw libraries for what they really are: accessible safe havens – the last of our community centres.
When you’re on the road you live according to the whims of the weather. There were many days when dust, wind, rain and heat forced us inside and quite literally on top of one another. So we sought out libraries that gave us the luxury of a carpeted floor and too many chairs. There the baby could crawl unencumbered, my small bookworms devoured as many pages as time allowed and kind librarians gave us craft supplies; paper, crayons, paddle pop sticks, googly eyes and pipe cleaners. I exhaled; sheltered from the weather with all children content, busy and in my line of sight.
At the end of our journey and while we were looking for a rental, I wrote every word of my first book in the corner of the library that’s now my local. I escape to that same corner most weeks. It’s a comfortable, familiar space that offers the promise of uninterrupted writing time. I’m so lucky to have it.
In a world as noisy as ours, we need the quiet space of libraries for solace and safety. They are community hubs that serve whoever walks through the door but they also foster hope – in the power of words and in the people who write and read them.
Libraries will only exist for as long as we borrow from them. Next time you check out a book, consider it your civic duty.
• Jodi Wilson is a mother of four and the author of Practising Simplicity. She writes weekly on Substack
