Over the past few months, the Lisburn Road Library has become a place that we frequent. On Saturday mornings, if I’m not working, we go there to read. It’s conveniently located just 2 minutes away from where we live.
It is a small library, but one of many. The entire library network in Northern Ireland is linked together, allowing readers to borrow books through an inter-library loan system. If the book I’m looking for is not available at my local library, I can put in a reservation notice through the website, the app, or at the counter; the book will be shipped from another library that holds it in stock within a matter of days (provided it has not been checked out by someone else).
As far as I understand it, Nothern Ireland benefits from the UK’s legal deposit requirement, which gives us access to every book ever published in the country. With the (free) membership, we also have a vast selection of e-books and audiobooks at our fingertips.
I have three books on loan currently: John Williams’ Stoner, John le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and Albert Camus’ L’etranger (an English translation, of course). I am slow to read them, especially in the last few weeks as my time has mostly been occupied by tinkering with this version of the website, but I can easily renew them whenever I need to by using the free app.
Libraries are one of the last remaining bastions of knowledge. With all that’s going on in the world it’s difficult to believe they are still allowed to exist.
Go to your local. Go today. Knowledge is free.
