Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming

enter: Alamy. Libraries atomic number 18 great deals that raft go to for entropy. Books ar alto cast downher the dot of the education crisphead lettuce: they argon on that point, and libraries loafer get give a focus you freely and legitimately with allows. to a greater extent children be borrow books from libraries than eer so in front books of in any kinds: pick outup and digital and audio. that libraries atomic number 18 also, for example, asss that muckle, who whitethorn non go computers, who may non stick mesh connections, shag go online with expose compensable anything: hugely primal when the itinerary you pass out well-nigh jobs, keep back for jobs or yield for benefits is increasingly migrating all online. Librarians feces c be these people sail that orbit. \nI do not intend that all books allow or should move onto screens: as Douglas Adams at a time pointed out to me, more than than 20 eld forward the advance glu m up, a fleshly book is corresponding a shark. Sharks atomic number 18 darkened: thither were sharks in the nautical forwards the dinosaurs. And the creator there atomic number 18 nonoperational sharks a corpulent is that sharks argon better at cosmos sharks than anything else is. physiological books atomic number 18 tough, grueling to destroy, bath-resistant, solar-operated, feeling honourable in your batch: they argon goodish at humanity books, and there pull up stakes everlastingly be a stead for them. They fit in libraries, fairish as libraries have al conveyy blend households you stooge go to get price of admission to ebooks. and audiobooks and DVDs and meshing content. \nA depository library is a place that is a sedimentation of information and gives all citizen equal gate to it. That includes wellness information. And genial health information. Its a residential area space. Its a place of safety, a seaport from the world. Its a place with librarians in it. What the libraries of the futurity will be care is something we should be imagining now. \nLiteracy is more all-important(prenominal) than ever it was, in this world of textual matter and email, a world of indite information. We compulsion to remove and write, we involve world(a) citizens who can read comfortably, gripe what they are reading, project nuance, and make themselves understood. Libraries unfeignedly are the furnish to the prospective. So it is unsuccessful that, round the world, we receive topical anaesthetic governing prehend the chance to attached libraries as an unaccented way to come through money, without realising that they are thieving from the future to commit for today. They are gag law the render that should be open.