Birmingham is a city where the arts are seen as some sort of unnecessary evil, a relic from a time when we wastefully spent money on recreation and leisure instead of pinching every penny for the purpose of prosperity. A relic that will inevitably be axed to make up for the mismanagement of council finances. Unfortunately, this is not a problem unique to Birmingham. Across the UK we are closing down libraries and museums like they’re going out of fashion, but maybe that’s because they are. A recent YouGov survey found that only 38% of adults are members of their local library, with the percentage being a measly 23% for 18-25 year olds. How can this have happened?

The obvious answer, as it seems to be for the large majority of the problems plaguing our modern world, is the internet. Not only are people’s attention spans completely disintegrated from years of short-form content, whatever long-form content they do consume is most likely not going to be a book. It’s an unfortunate fact that these days people just don’t seem to read as much as they used to. Books still remain popular, but our relationship with them has changed, as our relationships with almost everything have changed since we started carrying around 24/7 access to the world in our pockets. We don’t watch as many films, and the films we do watch are not watched in cinemas. We don’t buy albums and listen to them the whole way through, we shuffle our Liked Songs, a thousand-song nightmare playlist of everything we have ever remotely enjoyed. 

I don’t want to sound like a Luddite or a man in his 20s hopelessly romanticising about a past that he either wasn’t alive for or was too young to properly remember (though that is what I’m doing) but it is a simple fact that our relationship with art and media has been foundationally changed by our reliance on phones. Couple that with a disturbing rise in anti-intellectualism and libraries may not have all that long left as an institution.

The problem is that libraries are brilliant, they don’t need to do anymore to attract the attention of the public. At the Library of Birmingham, you can, to name but a few:

Not only can you do all of these and more, but these activities are all mostly free or at worst they are available for a subsidised price which you wouldn’t find anywhere else. But if libraries are so good, why do only 38% of adults have a library card (and remember this stat is only about being a member of your local library, which means that even less of the population actively make use of what their library has to offer)? 

An economist would tell you it is simply a matter of benefits and costs. The cost of making your way to a library, finding a book you want to take out, bringing said book home and then making the same trip again in four weeks time when the loan expires; this cost is for most people not worth the benefits which they would get from reading a book. Why would you go through all that effort when there’s a not-unlikely possibility that you won’t even like the book you take out? At least if you don’t like an Instagram Reel you can just scroll to the next one. Nice and simple, your daily dose of brain rot fed to you on a spoon for you to enjoy whenever you want, which is every single moment of downtime you have.  

I’m aware that not every library is like the one in the city centre, most libraries are simply old buildings that have two purposes: letting you take out books and letting you exist indoors without being bothered. Both of these commodities, in any other context, would not be free. It is, regrettably, these smaller libraries which are under threat from our financially irresponsible council. They can justify keeping the main library open with its gift shop and ping pong tables (at least until the council becomes bankrupt again), but what good reason could they possibly have for paying the rent and wages to keep a small building full of books open. We live in a world where everything is commodified, everything is quantified. If a library doesn’t make a profit, and doesn’t get used by most people, then in this world it does not make any sense to keep it open. 

Attitudes towards libraries, whether that be the attitudes of the population or of those in power, need to change and they need to do so quickly. We are at a point in time where the decisions we make are crucial if we don’t want libraries to join NHS dentists and community centres as relics of a bygone era. 

We are blessed to live in a world where the library remains as a bastion of freedom – the freedom to obtain knowledge and the freedom to simply exist without needing to pay for the privilege. But, like with any freedom, there is always someone waiting to take it from you the minute you stop exercising it. If we want libraries to stick around we need to make sure we use them like they might not be here tomorrow, because they just might not.