Libraries Rock!

by David McVey

Back in 2010, right at the start of the post-recession austerity regime, you may remember that an egregious pro-cuts demonstration descended on Westminster. Now, of course, this is a democracy and everyone is entitled to their opinion, even if they think austerity is great. That’s what I thought, anyway, as I watched on television, and then something caught my eye. One of the protestors carried a home-made placard that read;

LIBRARIES SUCK!

It’s just a bit of fun, I suppose he might have argued. No, I’d have replied before I hit him, some things are too important to joke about.

The value of libraries to the communities they serve hardly needs to be emphasised but they’re especially useful for writers. Of course, writers use them to borrow books, for research and reference, digital resources and much more. But they are also valuable as places to work. ‘Where do you do your writing?’ writers are often asked, and most answer ‘At my desk,’ or something similar. But it’s a lonely business, hammering away alone at home, at a pitiless keyboard, and it’s one with many distractions; the contents of the fridge are just downstairs and the telly is just a click away. And then your neighbour clatters in his flip-flops onto his garden decking and switches on an inane commercial radio station at full blast just below your window, before firing up the Black and Decker on some abstruse garden DIY project. What now?

You could take the Rowling route and head for a café, as long as you have the cash (and the bladder capacity) to cope with an overpriced latte every half hour. More likely you’ll end up in the library, like I often do. I’m currently a member of three council library services, including in my own area. I have a membership card for my old university’s library as well as cards for the National Library of Scotland and the National Archives of Scotland. I know I can access a couple of other university libraries for working in, if not for withdrawing books. And I lecture in a small FE college campus with its own small library.

University libraries are inspiring places to work; whatever your research needs you’ll find the material you want and as you write you have a sense of belonging to a community of knowledge and learning and scholarship. Further, most university libraries these days have moved beyond the SILENCE! culture and provide areas for silent study, quiet study, and group study, as well as cafes and social areas. Prefer to work in silence, in an atmosphere of scholarly whispering or in a generalised buzz with an aroma of coffee? Choose your space.

The National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh is one of my favourite places to work. My reader’s card gives me access not only to their books but also their vast store of papers and maps and manuscripts, a bewildering range of which can be viewed online, much of it from my home laptop. As a member of Glasgow Libraries I can also use the mighty Mitchell Library, one of the world’s great municipal collections, with its vast range of lending facilities and specialist services. I remember hammering away on my laptop with a pile of books beside me in the Mitchell while the chap across the aisle was using one of the library PCs to access the web. He was browsing the site of an Ibiza club, in particular its photos of a wet t-shirt Competition. Libraries? All human life really is there.

Of course, libraries, from the local lending outfit to the great national institutions, offer a great deal more than books and study space. They run exhibitions and host writers’ and readers’ groups and special events to encourage reading and writing and library use. Like most writers, a decent amount of my income comes from contributing to events held in or run by libraries. There are all sorts of reasons for writers to cheerlead for libraries, not least of them self-interest.

Despite the cuts in library services during this long dark night of austerity, there are still hopeful signs. The rise of the genealogy craze caused new resources to be put into family history services, as libraries and archives saw an opportunity for a new source of income. A new Highland Archive Centre was opened in Inverness, for example, catering for the many people who flock to the Highlands seeking their roots. The Scotland’s People Centre at the National Archives of Scotland in Edinburgh is also specifically designed to support family history research.

The opening of the new Library of Birmingham was, of course, contentious, given the closure of nearby local branches yet it was an incredible statement of intent; the body language said that libraries are part of the future, not the past, that books matter, reading matters, writing matters. The sheer daring and ambition of the Library of Birmingham was reflected in much of the media coverage of its opening, with reporters clearly puzzled at such an audacious new venture for what was, after all, just a library. The opening paragraph of a report on the BBC website gives a good example of the incredulity and negativity; ‘Birmingham's new central library has opened at a cost of £189m,’ it began, ‘but in an era of spending cuts and library closures across the country, is such an outlay justifiable?’

I do have a secret worry. So much of the use we make of our libraries is free. In our libraries, a rich hoard of the United Kingdom’s historical, artistic and literary treasures is free for anyone to access. There is often concern that the arts are beyond the financial reach of ordinary people, and this can certainly be true in the case of opera, music, dance and theatre. Yet an incredible abundance of cultural riches is available simply by applying for a library card.

But, regrettably, there are politicians. Do they know that such a vast cultural resource is available to the lower orders for free? After all, few politicians these days are particularly well-read. Would they be happy about these cultural handouts if they did know? Most of them, I suspect, of whatever party, are closer in fiscal thinking to Libraries Suck Guy than they are to writers and readers and scholars.

And so to the moral of my tale. Use your local and national libraries. Don’t take your laptop to an expensive, tax-dodging coffee chain, but rather to a community of the written word near where you live. Talk libraries up to your friends, readers, audiences, pupils, neighbours, students, colleagues, congregations and clients. Emphasise that they’re free, especially if you are speaking to people on low incomes or who are unemployed. Let’s play our part in packing libraries with people who value and appreciate them.

And if, as a result, we writers start to struggle to find a seat in our libraries, we can console ourselves with this; we’ll always be the ultimate winners from increased library use.


David McVey lectures in Communication at New College Lanarkshire. He has published over 120 short stories and a great deal of non-fiction that focuses on history and the outdoors. He enjoys hillwalking, visiting historic sites, reading, watching telly, and supporting his home-town football team, Kirkintilloch Rob Roy FC.

Jungle Books

By Catriona Troth

On a piece of waste ground outside Calais, rapidly turning into a sea of mud in the autumn rains, is a tent city of refugees from Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan. Many of them are highly educated people whose studies have been curtailed by war. Others are children who are desperate to go to school.

In the middle of this, lie a couple of brightly decorated tents which house Livres de la Jungle -  the Jungle Library.

The founder of the Jungle Library is Mary Jones. Originally from Wales, Jones now teaches in Amiens, some 160km from Calais.

“Ever since the previous centre at Sangatte closed, I’ve been keeping an eye on things here. I knew I wanted to do something, but I kept telling myself I was just too far away. But then I thought, ‘just go.’ Perhaps I could offer English lessons.”

She spent a lot of time just sitting and watching, trying to understand what the needs really were.

“I knew the reason a lot of them wanted to get to England was in order to study. I thought maybe I could get books from people like the Open University. But I knew reading should also be for pleasure.”

She began by clearing out her own bookshelves, and the library grew from there. Livres de la Jungle

was set up in a couple of tents. After an article appeared in the Guardian, they were flooded with books, especially novels.

"It's lovely. But what is really needed can be quite specific. There are different groups of users. Some are highly educated and desperate to continue their studies. They can be looking for books about chemistry or engineering, say. Others want very basic books to help them learn - not just English, but French too. And then there are the children.”

There are simple practical needs too. A generator to provide electricity. A lock on the door. Warmth. Jones set up a crowd-funder (now closed) in order to address some of those needs and to deflect people from spending money on expensive postage for books.

“A photographer provided us with some laptops, which were already loaded with the language teaching software, Rosetta Stone. We have no security, and when they first appeared, a few of them walked out of the tent. But then a few days later, they walked back in again.”

She would love to be able to provide decent WiFi, which the refugees could use to speak to their families via Skype, or to access free online courses such as MOOCs.

“My ambition is for this be a warm space where people can come and just have a few minutes of normality. “

One group supporting the Jungle Library is Exiled Writers Ink. They are going to be in the Jungle Library performance space one day during the week of 5th October. Exiled and refugee spoken word poets and prose writers will perform their work in the languages of the refugees. They have put out an appeal specifically for books in Arabic, Tigrinea, Amharic, Dari, Pashto, Farsi and Somali, to be brought to the Exiled Lit Cafe night at 22 Betterton Street, London WC2 9BX, on 5th October, having first contacted [email protected]..


The day I interviewed Jones, two other things happened. Firstly, another of her great supporters, the Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green London, brought over a delivery of donated books. Secondly, French police choose to bulldoze a small encampment of Syrians who are outside the Jungle.

“They had built themselves a little community by on old warehouse and garden,” Jones tells me. “I don’t think their relationship with the neighbouring houses was that great. I had bought them a generator, but they told me they didn’t dare use it because it would make too much noise.

“They were already traumatised, by what they had left behind, and what they had been through to get here. And one of their group had recently been electrocuted. And now they’ve lost everything, all over again.”

Simon Key from the Big Green Bookshop witnessed the aftermath.

“The people in the camp are in an impossible situation,” he wrote on Twitter. “It was horrible to see how they were treated.”

The Big Green Bookshop has raised almost £3k for the library. It began as a local appeal, after Key read about the library in the Guardian. Then their appeal was mentioned in the Telegraph and picked up on BBC News, and the whole thing spiralled. At one point they were receiving twenty parcels a day with books to take to Calais.  As a final flourish, they had a mammoth sale of second hand books. Then on 21st September, they drove over to Calais with the donated books.

That morning police in Calais blocked all the entrances to the Jungle and they were redirected to a massive warehouse. They described seeing people picking through the rubble of 300 smashed up tents, looking for their stuff. "Everyone came to help," Key told me. "The camaraderie was incredible."

“The people here are so friendly & positive, despite all that's happened," he wrote, when they arrived in the Jungle.  "Their attitude is inspiring."

And their books did make it through to the library, as Jones confirmed to me a couple of days later.

"I don't want this to be a one off." Key told me. "I have been contacting other indie bookshops, so we can make this a regular thing. We want to ensure the library always has fresh supply of books."

At the end of our interview, I asked Jones what her greatest hope is. I was thinking about her greatest hope for the library, but characteristically, her vision was much broader.

“My greatest hope is for these lovely people to be able to live a normal family life. To build a home somewhere that isn’t on a rubbish dump. To be safe and secure.”



If you would like to help the Calais Jungle Library, PLEASE DO NOT JUST SEND BOOKS. They have set up a Facebook page, and they will be using that to let people know about specific requirements for help.

If you have connections with any of these things:

• Materials for teaching either English OR French as a foreign language

• Academic books, especially science, maths and engineering

• Books in the languages of the main groups at the camp (Arabic, Tigrinea, Amharic, Dari, Pashto, Farsi and Somali)

• Dictionaries from those languages into English and/or French 

again, DO NOT SEND THEM DIRECTLY, but please contact Mary Jones (maryjones[at]orange[dot]fr ) and ask how best you can help.

A Tale of York Gardens Library

By Catriona Troth, the Library Cat.

In the October issue of Words with Jam, I have written about a number of community groups either fighting for the survival of their libraries or now actively involved in running them.  Here is another story to go with those:  York Gardens Library in Wandsworth who, in one of the poorest wards in London, face an eye-watering target for fundraising to keep their library going.

Thea Sherer from The Friends of York Gardens Library, tells me:

"In 2010 York Gardens Library and Community Centre was threatened with closure, as a result of local government cuts. Nearby residents and civic groups came together to campaign against the decision and support came from across the borough, including from many people who had never visited this library but recognised its value to the local community. As a result of a concerted campaign, a compromise was reached to allow the library to remain open with support from community stakeholders and volunteers.

Story Time at York Gardens

“The library and associated community centre remains open as a Direct Service Organisation (DSO) pilot project, with a reduced staff supported by volunteers. The local community will contribute to the management and day-to-day running of the library, thus reducing the cost burden on Wandsworth Borough Council.

“Part of the role of the volunteer group is to raise a significant amount of funds (more than £70K per annum) to contribute to the operational costs of the building and services. Wandsworth still provides around £100K per year of funding, including (reduced) staffing costs. Volunteers support work in the library. They also develop and run community projects which run in the community rooms and promote the library and centre."

£70k might sound like an extraordinary amount for any  community to have to raise, but the scale of the challenge facing the Friends of York Gardens is made even more apparent if you consider that 60% of residents on the neighbouring estate are unemployed and more than 40% do not have English as their first language. Incidents of hidden homelessness and overcrowding are five times more likely in this ward than the national average. The area is associated with issues of crime and antisocial behaviour.

Of course what this means is that the need for library services is greater than ever, and it is this awareness that is driving the Friends .  Access to books and IT at home are both significantly lower than average and the library is especially important to children and minority groups.

“The need for library services here is unquestionable,” Sherer says, “but the way these services are used may be unconventional. Several volunteer run projects are bringing more and more children into the library in a number of innovative ways. The drama club, capoeira group and craft club are all well attended. A volunteer-run GCSE tutoring course, run for free for local teenagers, has been really successful. These activities provide great things to do for local children but also increase footfall in the library itself.”

The £70k per annum fundraising challenge will be met in part by charitable fundraising and in part through letting of community rooms.

“Staff and volunteers are working very hard to increase room bookings which will help a lot. The volunteers in the Friends group are all rather stretched and so committing a lot of time to fundraising activities is a real challenge,” says Sherer. “Major library functions are all still completed by council library staff. And some very dedicated individual volunteers have been tremendously supportive, particularly when it comes to running community projects. But getting enough volunteers with sufficient commitment to assist in the library on an ongoing basis has proved a challenge.”

The group has also has to manage its partnership with Wandsworth Borough Council.

“The first twelve months were difficult while we found the best ways of working together,” Sherer says. “There were many operational aspects related to the library and the building where it was unclear, or where there was disagreement, on whether the council had decision making power or the volunteer/Friends group.

“For example, the setting of the charges for the community to hire out rooms within the building has always been set by the council and were uncompetitive and too high for community groups. Some flexibility has now been added, which has eased the situation and allowed more community organisations to use the rooms. However, the Friends group believe that more power to set these charges needs to be given to the volunteer organisation. It also took significantly longer than originally planned for the council to employ a new library manager. The project has been given significant impetus since the manager was appointed. “

In spite of everything, Sherer remains upbeat. And the dedication of determination of the Friends of York Gardens Library is unquestionable.  But it is hard not to conclude that this is a community that has been forced into an impossible position.  As Sherer says, “It will remain to be seen whether the fundraising target is really achievable and how the council will respond if it is not met.”

In the main article in the magazine, I interview Jim Brooks of the Friends of Little Chalfont Library , who has advised so many community groups around the country . Brooks suspects that some Councils may be setting community libraries up to fail. “They’ve worked out that closing libraries will lose them votes,” he says. “So they set a bunch of volunteers up with a building that’s falling apart, starve them of key resources and then when the libraries fail, they will be able to say - well, we tried the volunteer route but it didn’t work.”

Let’s hope Wandsworth and York Gardens don’t fall into this trap.

To read the main article in the October issue of Words with Jam, go to our website and subscribe FREE to the online edition.

Canadian Libraries: A Tale of Two Authorities

by Catriona Troth, The Library Cat

From the outside, it looks exactly the same as when I used to cycle there from home as a child. A little white, weatherboarded house, surrounded by a picket fence. Like houses up and down this quiet street in the oldest part of the village, Thornhill Village Library still bears the small plaque telling passers-by who lived there in 1867, the year of Canada’s Confederation. The board swinging like a pub sign outside bears the same logo of a spreading tree.

Inside, though, it’s been doing some growing. Beyond the two roomsthat I remember, there’s a children’s library I brought my own children to, ten years ago. And now it seems to have sprouted another room beyond that. High-ceilinged and lit with tall windows that let in the warm, spring sunshine, this rooms is lined with non-fiction books. In the middle is a large island of computer desks and off to one side, a cluster of sofas and chairs just begging for someone to curl up for a good read.

The front of the library, the bit I remember from my childhood, is given over to largely paperback fiction. The spines sport large letters on squares of coloured paper. The colour indicates the genre of the book and the letter gives the first letter of the author’s surname, making it easy to find what you are looking for and, I imagine, to file things. Canadian titles are marked with a red maple leaf.

The children’s section has a double ring of shelves, with a rocking chair in the middle that looks perfect for storytime. There are little wooden stools, a doll’s house and some soft toys. On the back wall are photographs of pets belonging to the young library users. I spot a pig and a donkey in amongst the dogs and cats and rabbits.

The book I eventually settle down to read, on another of the comfy chairs scattered about, is Audrey Niffenegger’s graphic novel, The Night Bookmobile. This is the story of a woman who, at various points in her life, encounters a mysterious mobile library whose ever-expanding shelves hold a copy of every book she has ever read. It seems oddly appropriate in these surroundings - a library I return to every decade or so, which always seems to have grown a bit since last time I saw it and which holds so many memories of my own explorations in reading.
Librarians on the Picket Lines

Thornhill Village Library has survived its own turbulent times. When I was in high school, they build a large central library just two kilometres away. The little village library was considered redundant and threatened with closure. But the locals had other ideas and fought to keep it going. It survived as a paperback library, thrived and then expanded once more. It is now open seven days a week, including two evenings. As much as can be said of anything these days, its future seems secure.

The same cannot be said of libraries a few miles to the south, in the Greater Toronto area.

A year ago, with the support of a massive public campaign spearheaded by Margaret Atwood, Toronto librarians won a battle with City authorities to prevent the closure of branches. But any triumph they may have felt has been temporary. Mayor Rob Ford and his councillor brother (dubbed ‘the twin Fordmayors by Atwood) have come back with swingeing budget cuts and new terms of employment that would remove job security from large numbers of library staff.

The librarians responded by going on strike, closing every branch in the Greater Toronto Area from Sunday 18th March. For ten days they maintained a picket line in Nathan Philips Square, outside City Hall, walking in a good humoured circle around a band of musicians singing protest songs and periodically break into a chant. (‘Libraries work because - WE DO!’) One week into the strike, on Sunday afternoon, they held a read-in at the main Toronto Reference Library, inviting the public to ‘come and read a Canadian book.’ They were supported by the Writers’ Union of Canada, and writers including Susan Swan and Douglas Gibson joined in.

It was quite hard to guage how much public support they had this time round. The newspaper coverage was mixed, ranging from those who believe that the librarians action proved they ‘were only in it for the money all along’ to those who thought their quiet, dignified protest was perfectly pitched to disconcert the mayor and his brother.

Margaret Atwood was out of town when the strike began, working on a new book. But she emailed the Globe and Mail, voicing her support for librarians, as well as encouraging her Twitter followers to attend the weekend read-in. “People support libraries but sometimes they don’t understand that is takes people to make them run,” she said.

After ten days, the union concluded a deal with the Library Board that involved some compromise on both sides. But Toronto’s libraries reopened on 30th March with their workers in a better position than those in unions who had to deal directly with the City Council. Toronto still loves its libraries, even if the ‘Twin Fordmayors’ still don’t get it.

Support for Libraries - Overdue*

Because of the timing of the Speak up for Libraries Rally in London, the Library Cat column this month comes to you from the blog rather than the magazine.

Like hundreds of other library supporters, I travelled to Westminster today to join the Speak Up For Libraries rally in Methodist Central Hall.

One of the first people I met when I arrived was Mar Dixon, who became an unwitting campaign leader in January last year after tweeting "Libraries are important because ... [fill in your answer & RT] #savelibraries." This casual tweet was retweeted by the likes of Margaret Atwood and Neil Gaiman and eventually trended worldwide.

Her knack for the timely tweet continued last October, when her suggestion for a rally in support of libraries coincided with a proposal arising from the Campaign for the Library Conference. And so Speak Up For Libraries was born.

Today’s rally was supported by Unison, the Women’s Institute, Voices for the Library, CILIP, the Library Campaign, Booktrust, the Reading Agency, and many individual library campaigns. The Campaign for the Book’s Alan Gibbons opened procedings with a ‘half-term report’ on Edward Vaisey, aged 43 ¾ . Gibbons’ verdict was received with much laughter by an audience who had just watched a film of the Libraries’ Minister giving evidence to the parliamentary select committee:

• English - has problem with the meanings of some words, particularly ‘comprehensive’ and ‘efficient’. Appears to think ‘library’ is synonymous with a phone box full of books
• Maths - statistics are a particular weakness
• Science - little grasp of the concept of a fair test
• Attendance - goes missing when asked to perform

Speaker after speaker presented their own personal take on why the minister’s indifference to the fate of libraries is plain wrong-headed.

Author Kate Mosse asked what would happen to the writers of tomorrow if anyone from children to the elderly could not look round at books on shelves and think - why not me? “We need more people to write stories - not fewer.”

Children’s author, Philip Ardagh, reminded us that we are losing post offices and losing pubs, “so let’s not lose libraries as well.”

Ruth Bond from the WI warned that the issue was not all about closures. “Where the buildings are safe, then services (staff, opening hours, book funds) may still be eroded.”

Dave Prentis of Unison quoted figures from their new report into libraries which show that more people use libraries each week than attend Premier Football League games or go to the cinema.

James Dolan of CILIP told us that in this financial year alone two thousand library staff have been lost and three thousand opening hours per week have been cut from libraries around the country.

Dan Jarvis, Shadow Library Minister, came up with what was perhaps the soundbite of the day - comparing Ed Vaisey to Dr Beeching, who in the 1960s presided over the closure of vast sections of the railway network.

Ian Anstice, librarian and author of the highly influential Public Library News blog, told us of the library users who tell him that they don’t know what they would do without the library. “I know what they’d do. They’d never get out. They’d never meet anyone… I’m a librarian and I’ll never be shushed!”

Many speakers reminded us that when libraries close it is the most vulnerable sections of society that suffer - children, the elderly, those on the lowest incomes.

But as Alan Gibbons reminded us, a protest must be about Roses as well as Bread. Amidst all the serious speeches, two musicians filled the hall with their protest songs. The lead singer from Doyle and the Fourfathers sang their song, ‘Welcome to Austerity’. One Man and His Beard belted out ‘We Need Libraries.’

And if all that did not show the breadth of support enjoyed by libraries, as people prepared for the move across the road to lobby Members of Parliament, a small group bearing pink balloons gathered on the pavement outside. ‘Mills & Boon Loves Libraries’ read the placards.

*Slogan of the Speak Up For Libraries Campaign

Next Saturday is National Libraries Day

Saturday 4^th February is National Libraries Day. Set up last year in response to threat to libraries around the UK, it aims to be a nationwide celebration of libraries, librarians and library staff across all sectors. If you’d like to take part, you can click on the link above to find out about events near you. Or you can buy or borrow, The Library Book, published especially for National Libraries Day, in which twenty-three writers, from Alan Bennett to Zadie Smith, describe libraries real or imagined, why they matter and to whom.

More Libraries in Upheaval

The situation for libraries in the UK is changing so fast that the Library Cat column in the February edition of Words with Jam was out of date almost before the final proofs had gone to the printers. So here is a flying update.

Celebrations in Gloucestershire, when a judicial review ruled in favour of the protestors are starting to look as if they might have been premature. The council has published new plans, emphasising concern for equality. (The grounds given for ruling the original closures unlawful were that the council had failed to give due regard to issues of equality.) Seven libraries and five mobiles under threat compared to ten and six last year, but the library budget is to be halved over two years.

Thirty-one library authorities now have at least one library run by volunteers, without a professional librarian on the staff. We have also now had the first ‘community’ library to propose charging for membership. Bexley Village Library in London has been taken over by the charity Greener Bexley, who are offering additional benefits to those users who are prepared to pay for privilege.

Suffolk is going ahead with the idea of setting up a charitable trust to run its libraries. Several others are considering following suit, among them Ealing, Durham, Warrington and Greenwich. But there seem to be hints that the tax relief for such trusts will soon be lost.

One such not-for-profit group looking to move library provision is GLL, which currently operates leisure centres in the south-east and may be poised to take over libraries in Greenwich, Croydon and Wandsworth. But the prospect of libraries in the UK being outsourced to private profit-making companies may have receded. The American company LSSI, which had stated that it wanted to take over 15% of UK libraries within five years, has backed off, telling the Independent, “we're still waiting to see if the UK is ready yet for the idea of library privatisation.”

Essex and Kent councils are employing an American debt collection company, Unique Management Services, to collect unpaid fines for library books. Kent estimates that is has £100k in unpaid fines, and Essex £650k. But the individual amounts recovered are likely to be tiny: the largest fine incurred in Kent last year was £25.

The Parliamentary Select Committee on Culture Media and Sport finished collecting written evidence for its enquiry into Library Closures on 12^th January, and we are now waiting to hear who will be called to give verbal evidence before the committee.

Meanwhile, the response from Secretary of State Jeremy Hunt and Minister Ed Vaisey remains a deafening silence.

On Tuesday 13^th March, library campaigners from around the UK are due to lobby Parliament to protest at cuts to services around the country and the continuing uncertainty over the government’s role in defending them. They are calling on everyone who loves libraries to join them at Central Hall, Westminster (1 Wimpole Street) at 12 noon.

Bookcrossing at the Starbooks Occupation Library

A couple of months ago, I wrote about the Starbooks Occupation Library at Occupy London’s now threatened camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral.

Housed under the same canvas as the Tent City University, which runs lectures, music gigs and poetry readings, the library’s atmosphere is cheerful and welcoming and the selection of books is eclectic. “No porn and no Barbara Cartland,” the middle aged man in charge told me. “Apart from that we’ll take anything.”

The library operates strictly on an honour system. Those who borrow books are trusted to either return them or replace them with another donation. Or for a small donation, you can buy a book. While I’m there a teacher makes a donation for an old copy of Teach Yourself Speaking and Debating. “I work with a group of young boys,” she says. “This is just the sort of thing I need to help build their confidence.”

On my first visit, I had no books to leave at the library, but a week or so later, I went back with two that I had registered on Bookcrossing. I had a feeling that a book set free here could end up having quite a tale to tell. And I was right. This morning, to my delight, I received the following notice, passed on by the Bookcrossing Alert Robot:

I found this book [The Women’s Room] at Occupy London's Library and was told that I could take it home with me if I wished. I had hoped to bring it back to Occupy Boston, but encampment was shut down the very day I flew home (to Boston). Now it's in Massachusetts with me, and I'll take it up to Saratoga Springs New York in a few days where I plan to pass it on.

Can’t wait for the next instalment!