Want to build democracy? Then build libraries

Book lovers have our own version of the travel list challenge. Instead of “100 places to see before you die”, we have lists of 100 libraries to read in. Our library porn consists of online listicles headlined “18 Libraries Every Book Lover Should Visit in their Lifetime” and “Five Most Beautiful Public Libraries in the World”.

Yet these lists reflect an imbalance that is hard to ignore. Most of the world’s great public libraries are concentrated in a small number of countries in the global north, with China as the main exception.

Though many developing countries have library networks — from the popular reading rooms you’ll find across much of south and east India to the mobile camel libraries of Kenya — most of our thriving library cultures are concentrated in countries that already have stable democracies, or at least thriving free speech.

Writers understand intuitively what a library does; it goes beyond the magic of reading itself, or the sturdy argument that any country with a thriving library culture will promote better reading habits. Scottish author Ali Smith captures this beautifully in her 2015 collection Public Library and Other Stories:

“We went to the library. And nobody bought books when I was young either. I went to the library. It was what we did, Helen said. It was a habit, a ritual. You borrowed it, you read it, you brought it back and chose something else, and someone else read whatever you read after and before you. It was communal.”

Smith published this set of stories when cuts to public spending across the UK were resulting in the closure of library after library, and in volunteers replacing paid library staff in huge numbers. This pattern is continuing today.

Libraries are secular gathering places, and it’s remarkable how much of the scholarship on libraries supports the argument that they act as a vaccination against urban loneliness, a refuge for the poorest and the most vulnerable, especially in cities that have very little else to offer them.

But the public library is also crucial to democracy. In Palaces for the People (2018), American sociologist Eric Klinenberg focuses on the institutions that help spread democratic culture; the founding principle of the library, he writes, is that “all people deserve free, open access to our shared culture and heritage”.

If there is one group of people who have shown that they understand this, it is the authoritarians and populists. It is a time-honoured path for dictators to consolidate power by attacking intellectual centres. Egypt’s President Abdel Fatteh el-Sisi shut down the popular Al-Karama libraries in 2016 and 2017 because they were funded by the prominent Egyptian human rights defender Gamal Eid. The libraries were dubbed seditious, echoing the long-held fear among oppressive rulers that books pose a threat to their regimes.

One approach favoured by populist leaders is to cut off funding. Turkey’s leaders have starved library networks by not opening new ones, and limiting funding to older ones. In 2019, the Turkish government seized and burnt books that mentioned Fethullah Gulen or the 2016 coup — they destroyed 301,878 books, according to their own education minister.

In the US, for the third consecutive year, Donald Trump advocated drastic library cuts in his 2020 budget, and proposed to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which would, in effect, stop federal funding for libraries.

In India, Narendra Modi’s BJP, the rightwing ruling party, has been quick to see the value of building its own intellectual culture. Many decades ago, it was first the nationalists of the freedom movement and then the communists and leftwingers in states such as Kerala and West Bengal who sought the advantages of funded public reading rooms and libraries. However tiny, these places became important communal spaces and helped political parties recruit more members. Today, it’s the BJP that is pouring funds into building “party libraries” for its members and the Indian right has welcomed new festivals like the Pondy Lit Fest, held in Puducherry, which offered a platform to leading and emerging rightwing voices.

In the UK and much of the world, libraries already face threats — funding cuts, branch closures, a lack of staff and resources. If we were serious about protecting democracy, we would start with saving the libraries we already have, and then build far, far more across the globe.

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Letter in response to this article:

Libraries’ essential service / From Sultan Ahamed, Mystic, CT, US