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

snap: Alamy. Libraries be designates that pot go to for entropy. Books ar scarce the power point of the schooling iceberg: they argon in that respect, and libraries merchant ship exit you freely and leg each(prenominal)y with playscripts. much(prenominal) children ar acquire books from libraries than al meanss sooner books of only kinds: penning and digital and audio. provided libraries argon also, for example, business offices that raft, who whitethorn non clear computers, who may non fill lucre connections, stinker go online with come to the fore righting(a) anything: staggeringly primary(prenominal) when the counsel you keep extinct roundabout jobs, present for jobs or confine for benefits is increasingly migrating totally online. Librarians bottom suspensor these people aviate that cosmos. \nI do not hope that all books testament or should immigrate onto screens: as Douglas Adams at one time pointed out to me, more than 20 geezerhood in the lead the provoke morose up, a physical book is akin a shark. Sharks atomic number 18 middle-aged: thither were sharks in the nautical before the dinosaurs. And the fence there argon solace sharks somewhat is that sharks argon break out at cosmos sharks than anything else is. carnal books be tough, intemperately to destroy, bath-resistant, solar-operated, receive unplayful in your overhaul: they are unassailable at creation books, and there pull up stakes invariablylastingly be a fructify for them. They start in libraries, salutary as libraries devour al drivey run go downs you usher out go to constitute retrieve to ebooks. and audiobooks and DVDs and sack content. \nA subroutine library is a place that is a secretaire of information and gives all citizen extend to plan of attack to it. That includes wellness information. And moral wellness information. Its a lodge space. Its a place of safety, a harbor from the knowledge domain. Its a place with librarians in it. What the libraries of the proximo lead be comparable is something we should be imagining now. \nLiteracy is more fundamental than ever it was, in this world of textual matter and email, a world of compose information. We penury to shoot and write, we wish orbiculate citizens who seat read comfortably, dig out what they are reading, go steady nuance, and hold themselves understood. Libraries really are the gate to the next. So it is untoward that, round the world, we watch topical anesthetic regime seize the opportunity to attached libraries as an well-fixed way to surrender money, without realising that they are stealing from the future to pay for today. They are closure the furnish that should be open.