The Bideford Library in Devon has survived three separate closure proposals. Each time, the council cited falling footfall, reduced budgets, and the availability of digital alternatives. Each time, the community organized, petitioned, and ultimately prevailed. The third closure attempt, in 2021, drew more than four hundred people to a town square meeting — in a town of three thousand people. The library remained open.
What People Actually Use Libraries For
The recurring argument against public libraries — that the internet has made them obsolete — consistently underestimates what libraries actually do. Book lending, which generates the footfall statistics that councils cite in closure proposals, represents perhaps 30% of actual library use. The rest is computer access, job application assistance, children's programming, informal community gathering, safe indoor space for people experiencing homelessness, and a dozen other functions that no digital service replicates.
"Every time a library closes proposal mentions digital resources as an alternative, I want to ask: for whom? Not everyone has a computer. Not everyone has reliable internet. Not everyone has a warm, safe place to sit for three hours."
What Cannot Be Replaced
The function that makes libraries genuinely irreplaceable — and that their defenders are often slow to articulate — is that they are one of the last genuinely public spaces in most Western cities. They require no purchase, no membership, no purpose. You may sit there doing nothing for as long as you like. This is, in the contemporary built environment, almost uniquely radical.