Defunding Libraries Is a Massive Mistake

Every time a library closes, a piece of our humanity goes with it.

Photo by Zoshua Colah on Unsplash

I was ten when Mom let me visit the library by myself.

“Stay here where it’s warm,” she said. “I’ll be back when the church bells ring.”

I wandered between the shelves, breathing in paper and polish. Not sure where to start.

A woman behind the counter looked up. “Need any help?”

I almost said no. Then stopped. “I don’t know what to read.”

Her glasses slipped down her nose mid-smile. “What do you like?”

“Stories with someone like me.”

She pointed toward the back. “Try there.”

So I did.

I sat on the carpet, opened a book, and started reading before I even checked what it was. By the time Mom came to pick me up, three books were stacked beside me. I’d already read half of one. She laughed. Said we should only take one. Then, helped me carry all of them home.

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I overheard a young woman ask if she could get a library card.

The librarian replied she’d need to provide proof of a local address.

“I don’t have one right now,” the woman said, shaking her head. “Homeless.”

So the librarian reached under the counter. “Then here’s a temporary card. You can still check out books.”

The woman turned it over in her hand.

I wanted to tell her that library card was more than plastic. But before I could say anything, she thanked the librarian, slipped the card into her pocket, and disappeared behind a sea of books.

“Maybe this is why the librarian works here,” I thought. “Because every so often, someone with nothing to their name walks out richer than when they came in.”

We talk about opportunity like it’s running out.

Maybe it’s just been waiting to be checked out from the library.

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“Book,” my baby sister said.

I looked up. “What did you say?”

My baby sister pointed at the picture book on the floor. So I picked it up and gave it to her.

“That’s right,” I said. “Book!”

By two, my sister was dragging her own stack of library books to the counter. By three, she knew her favorite section. And the first time I watched her walk through those doors alone, I knew she’d always be an avid reader.

Just like me.

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We need to stop pretending libraries will always be around.

Every month, another one shuts its doors. The reason is always budget cuts or funding reallocations. Words that sound reasonable until you realize they mean someone decided knowledge isn’t worth the cost.

But they never see what I see.

The teenager waiting for the computer to finish a scholarship form. The man reading yesterday’s paper because his Wi-Fi was cut off last month. Or, the mother using Google Translate on a computer to read a letter from her kid’s teacher because her primary language is Spanish, and she’s slowly learning English in her spare time.

Every library that dies takes a piece of the public with it.

Because a country that keeps cutting funding to libraries isn’t broke.

It’s bankrupt in spirit.

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I walked past my hometown library and saw the lights off in the middle of the day.

A sign said, “Closed until further notice.”

I stopped without thinking. Watched a man pull on the handle, check his phone, and walk away. The same door I used to walk through every Saturday, locked now.

I shouldn’t have felt so upset. But I did. And it felt like losing a loved one. Because I grew up in that library. Learned the alphabet between the stacks, studied for exams, filled out job applications on the public computers. When I moved out of town, I still came back to renew my card as it made me feel anchored to something when everything else kept changing.

Here’s another part politicians don’t mention in budget meetings…

You can count visitors, circulation, and cost per hour. But you can’t count what it means for a person to feel seen.

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When I was a kid, the librarian used to set books aside she thought I’d like. She said curiosity was a habit worth feeding. Looking back, I think she meant time spent reading was time invested wisely. And I still think about her every time I hear another library anywhere in the world is closing.

Hundreds of libraries in the UK have shut down since 2016, according to figures published by the BBC. And in the USA, the situation isn’t much better as Federal Funding cuts are putting libraries in peril.

“These figures show the crisis facing public libraries and confirm what we have long suspected,” said Isobel Hunter, the chief executive of the Libraries Connected charity. “Libraries are hit hardest in the very areas that need them most.”

It breaks my heart that we’re raising kids who don’t know what it’s like to grow up surrounded by free access to stories, history, and possibility. They’ll likely never know the sound of a physically stamped due date or what it feels like to what home with a stack of books… completely free of charge. And one day, they’ll walk past a locked door, same as I did, and feel nothing.

That’s the hard part.

Because sadly, they’ll never learn what it feels like to have a world open up when someone hands them a library card.