Is Literacy a Necessity?

Today is World Book Day. Children up and down the land are dressing up as their favourite characters; the second thing down on Google is 'World Book Day Costumes' leading to visions of frantic parents recycling Shepard's costumes from the nativity whilst their Yummy Mummy counterparts order Matilda costumes for forty quid of the t'internets...
I went on Cif and asked if the Graun could do a piece on World Book Day and literacy and someone responded asking the very interesting question 'what do we use literacy for?' This person is apparently a reader and would feel adrift without books, but questions the relevance of literacy for everyone.

Here is my answer

Every single time you read a road sign, think about the people who can't. Every time you need to find a number, think about the 5 MILLION adults in this country who cannot use a phone book. Every time you flick through a newspaper, think about the fact that there are no left wing publications in this country that cater for a reading level below Level 3. This means that a THIRD of people in this country cannot read information that is not right wing is bias, owned and produced by rich people with an agenda. One in six people, one in six people, do not have a functional level of literacy. That means a sixth of the adults in this country do not have the skills to have a life that they are supposed to aspire to.

Almost half of people in prison have a reading of Level 1 or below (D at GCSE). Children are leaving school not being able to read and 1/20 of those children go home to a house with no books in it. A tenth of children have never owned their own book.

We NEED literacy because we live in a world that has grown to rely on it. Six hundred years after the birth of printing, the Information Society is firmly established. Without the means of effective participation then how does someone know if they need literacy or not?

Happy World Book Day, enjoy your books, and feel thankful that you are one of the so few who can read them.

BookElf xxx

BookElf's piece on the Leeds Guardian ... with photo!

Leeds Central Library protest:

Defending people's right to learnIn the region of 50 people held a sit-down protest in Leeds Central Library against council plans to close up to 20 libraries in Leeds. Guest blogger Jess Haigh was one of them. Here's her take on the day of protest

Protester Jess Haigh takes part in a read-in at Leeds Central Library on Save Our Libraries day. Photograph: Sarah Bradley



It's 11.45am on a very windy Saturday and I'm in the entrance hall to the Leeds Central Library, lugging around four hefty bits of slogan covered wood.
With me are two police officers, a camera crew, a lanyard-wearing member of staff, and a few young women like me, in kitten heels and cardigans. We're trying to figure out where best to sit to read a book, without getting in anyone's way.
The library is already busy; all the computers are full with people scanning international papers online, checking their email and doing their homework: there's a group of parents with their young children in the brightly decorated area, surrounded by tiny shelves full of magic.
There's a queue at the issue desk, staffed by the friendliest people in the world, as people loan books, pay their fines, and make the most diverse of enquiries. One library staff member is helping someone log onto a computer for the first time. The tables are pretty much occupied both by older women and men reading, and a man and his child, sharing a story together.

The police officer is concerned there might be trouble brewing; rumours on the net apparently indicate as much. "How many are you expecting?" they ask us, "we've no idea, about 30?" my fellow skirt-suit wearer replies, "we're just going to read some books".
Protesters at a read-in at Leeds Central Library Photograph: Sarah Bradley In the end, the 50 or so people scattered around Leeds Central Library for the two hours on Saturday were hardly starting a riot. As part of the national Save Libraries day, where members of the public, writers and celebrities came out in force in favour of maintaining library services in the face of the most severe of cuts, we were there to highlight the issue, use the library services available, and show solidarity with the library staff and users.
Twenty branch libraries in Leeds are facing closure in the forthcoming council proposals, with the opening hours of the larger libraries adjusted. Around the country figures vary, however the overall threat to libraries is very real.
It's 12.30pm and I've just loaned out my quota of books. As a member of the Leeds Library, I am entitled to take out twenty items, which I spend a happy half hour choosing from the massive and wide ranging stock available.
There's about 30 of us now, scattered around the floor, and tables, reading, talking and comparing notes and stories. Someone stops to offer her support; as a retired librarian she agrees that fighting the closures is more important now than ever. The camera crew is interviewing a women with her little girl dressed as a cat explaining how she loves books, and how much they would miss the library service.

'Soft targets'

Libraries are a "soft" target. No-one dies if a library shuts down.
Sure, there will be no other safe, quiet, non-judgemental place for teenagers like I used to be to sit, and work. No table and chair for the older people to read their newspaper in the company of their friends, for free.
As one woman puts it: "when you've got your bus pass, you can't afford books". Yes, Amazon sells them for a penny, and everyone reads eBooks now, but £2.75 on postage is a hell of a lot when your living on £70 a week. Try telling someone who does not own a computer they must learn enough English to be able to stay in this country in six months, before they're deported, during which they're living off food stamps, by downloading a book. Soft target, indeed.
By quarter to one there are 40 of us.
There are children and babies, young students, middle-aged protest veterans reading biographies of famous Whigs, and pensioners arguing for better opening hours in their local branch libraries.

We've found David Cameron's biography, and much hilarity ensues. We're reading graphic novels, autobiographies, Mills and Boons, non-fiction tracts, button encyclopaedias.
A protester at Leeds library. Photograph: Sarah Bradley Every new arrival is greeted with smiles and offers of finding a chair, given a questionnaire the Leeds Council have produced on the library consultation. One protester lives in Bingley, can she join in? Of course she can, a visit to the issue desk and she has her own library card, and soon a bag full of Russian Classics she's always meant to read.
From a librarian's blog, to a facebook page, to links to the Twitter campaign started by an ICT lecturer and soon trending worldwide, this issue, like the sale of the nation's forests, has gripped the public's imagination. Sadly, this may have sidelined other incredibly important issues that have come about from the failure of successive governments to tackle the inequalities that result from the current economic systems, and legislation surrounding the distribution of wealth.

Under threat of closure

At half past one we're all still reading, with one little boy asleep peacefully in his pushchair. One young woman tells a journalist how she meets her dad in their local library, under threat of closure in the proposal, every other week. Their entire routine will be shot to pieces if it closes.

Another goes to the issue desk to join up; turns out she was already a member as a child, and still has a book out from 15 years ago. The returns bin is already full; people who want to take their quota to help with the statistics but can't carry home 20 books on the bus issue and return over and over again.
I remember the stack of shelving I have waiting for me in my work library on Monday and wince for the staff, who throughout are friendly and on the whole welcoming, considering how much of a pain having 50 people sitting on the floor of their workplace must be.

Many people have stopped to talk to us. The police stick around, watching us reading. At two we all quietly pack away, put the chairs back at the tables and the Mills and Boons, much derided but often the first things ever read for pleasure, back on the shelves.

A surreal protest?

We all share smiles and promises of future protests. One person later describes the read-in as surreal, others as their "favourite protest so far", illustrating the solidarity these times has brought. I lug the books I couldn't bare to part with home, to add to my to-be-read pile.
We might not have had a famous author doing a reading, or thousands of banner waving militants outside making the police even more nervous.
But we came together, from wherever we were before, and, I think, made our point; libraries are used, are needed, and should not be subject to cuts.

Even if one more person joined their library on Saturday, that is a success. If one person discovered their libraries catalogue online, that is a success. If one person reads just one more book as a result of seeing libraries on their local news that night, that is a success.

We have had free libraries in this country since 1850; by letting go of them now, even piece by piece we are deriding the original principles under which they were founded. We should be standing, or in this case sitting, together now, for libraries, for keeping public services public, for people's rights to live and rights to learn. Without that, how can we possibly be a society, never mind a big one?

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Libraries Table of Contents

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Full Table of Contents 

Why Libraries in Leeds are so important.

Ahem, as featured on today's Guardian Leeds

"Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere..."

- Jean Rhys

For longer than I can remember, I have loved books. Not necessarily stories, but always books.

I think that my favourites are old, original artwork paperbacks that can be picked up in Leeds Market for mere pennies, but I am not a snob – while I prefer books with covers and pages intact, I'll take whatever is available, old and charismatic; new and crisp; hard backed and noble; or cheap and cheerful paperbacks, slightly grimy or warped from a drowning in the bath, shared via a book meet or charity shop.

Or, I'll take the transient, as in the case of library books. Borrowed books, social books.

Despite the solitary reputation that reading is sometimes allocated, I find that it is an intensely communal activity. Books are best appreciated, I find, when they are shared, not hoarded, discovered as a result of a recommendation, rather than merely picked up by chance.

Book clubs, travelling suitcase libraries, and meet ups to swap books are easily set up in a city like Leeds, but this is not the case everywhere.

At the age of nine, I moved to Zimbabwe with my family, and my whole relationship with books subtly changed. Already an avid reader, up until then, books had always been easily accessible – I had inherited plenty from my mother and aunts, the library back home had a large diverse range, and anything else could be picked up from a shop.

Available but not always affordable

This wasn't necessarily the case in Zimbabwe. Where books were available they were not always affordable – reference and school books in particular.

There was a thriving second hand trade, but no guarantee from week to week that you would find something that gripped you. The local library network became a haven for me, and other addicts … sorry, readers.
It was neutral territory (though it is necessary to note that Zimbabwe was not as divided then as it seems to be now), where readers could come together regardless of disparities of income, ages, genders and ethnic origin. The social aspect of reading came to the fore, while other political considerations receded, albeit temporarily, into the background.

This bond between book lovers extends far further than the local area where the library is located. A group of innovative teachers coordinated with Ranfurly library, in London. This library collects ex-school books from all over the UK to be distributed internationally – for free.

One of the teachers involved told me that she still remembers the thrill of trawling through these, the excitement for her pupils, as she tried to pick the books that would best augment those already available. After all, for her pupils, their only access point to any books at all would come via the school, and libraries. This was by no means unusual, and still seems to be the case in many countries across the world. Indeed, a quick search online finds a number of different groups and charities that provide this very same service around the world.

The Miss Honeys and Mrs Phelps of Matilda (Roald Dahl) do exist and I have been lucky enough to meet them in libraries wherever in the world I've been.

Libraries in the internet age

Libraries provide a wealth of knowledge to people who might not ever be able to access them otherwise. This obvious, and simple premise remains vastly important in the internet age – despite many having the viewpoint that no information is valid, if not presented to us on a shiny screen.

Yet, even in relatively affluent countries, there are still people whom have never acquired fundamental literacy skills. In the three countries I have been fortunate enough to live in – libraries have run literacy schemes, amongst others, to promote life long learning, and assist anyone with the desire to learn more.
Online collections, such as Project Gutenberg, are invaluable, allowing for whole collections of out of copyright books to be made available freely, to anyone with an internet connection.

Leeds libraries: 'an oasis of calm'

At the moment, before the cuts take effect, there are 53 permanent libraries in Leeds.
Many are small, with only basic facilities, others are mobile, consisting of a van, and enthusiastic librarian, while the Central Library – tucked between the Art Gallery and City Hall – is a majestic building and kitted out for a variety of tasks, with DVDs, CDs, technical manuals, educational tomes, outdoors chess (!) and fiction books available.
With bookshops closing down, belts tightening and life becoming ever more stressful, I consider my local libraries provide an oasis of calm, a peaceful environment, an escape as effective as books themselves.

"We read to know we are not alone."

- attrib. CS Lewis

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Libraries Table of Contents

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Full Table of Contents