This blog is an extract from an assembly I delivered to students, titled An Ode to Libraries. It reflects on the enduring power of libraries as spaces for discovery, community, and inspiration.
As school winds down and summer stretches ahead, many families find themselves preparing for a new kind of timetable: one filled with sunshine, sibling skirmishes, and a sudden absence of structured activity. It’s a time of joy, yes—but also of the age-old challenge: how to keep children happy, stimulated, and off screens (at least some of the time).
Enter the humble library.
Not just any library, though, ours, The McLauchlan Library. Amidst the whirlwind of summer productions, sports days, and exam results, one quiet but mighty triumph deserves a little fanfare: our new Library catalogue, because it’s often the quieter triumphs which bring about systemic change.
Unveiled to staff by Ms Pathiyath, Head Librarian and Archivist, the new system blew us away. We loved its book recommendations and the fact that it’s used by lots of universities. A personal favourite detail was that you can ask it to show you a photo of the shelves in the Library so you can see not just the book you might want to read but also those in the vicinity which might offer you further inspiration. This reminded me of something very wise Dr Roberts said in his brilliant Nicholson Lecture this term.
He commented that one of the powers of a school Library was that the mere existence of the books on the shelves gave visitors to the Library an important cultural framework, like stars in the night sky which sailors used to use to navigate. Even if you don’t read all the books just seeing the titles on the shelves helps you to know that certain things exist. Sometimes school Librarians have tried to persuade me to get rid of some of the stock on the basis that ‘the pupils haven’t borrowed it since (insert whichever year in the first decade of the millennium)’. I’ve always been hesitant about adhering to these sorts of requests because there is something very sad about books going to the Library in the Sky just because teenagers don’t want to read Livy’s History or the political speeches of Cicero. So I’m delighted that Dr Roberts has unleashed a powerful argument in my arsenal to protect the Lesser Read Books of the McLauchlan Library. Not incidentally that the Librarians here have ever approached me about discarding any stock.
Ms Pathiyath obviously knows my passion for statistical evidence and so she kindly shared some scintillating statistics with me. Did you know that borrowing from the Library is up 260% since she introduced the new Accessit system? And the e-library online system has seen borrowing rates surge by 435%. She also shared with me that 31 of you had been very helpful Library Volunteers for your Duke of Edinburgh scheme. And my favourite statistic of all, that with nearly 40,000 resources across print and digital collections, spread over four floors, the McLauchlan Library is the largest single-site school collection in the independent school sector in England.
Why am I sharing Library statistics with you, you may wonder. Because you have the blank canvas of a summer holiday ahead of you, and I sincerely hope that you will spend some of it reading. So this is an Ode to Libraries. Libraries represent an awesome human feat, namely the attempt to categorise human knowledge, and to select a representative sample from the vast sum of human knowledge. The very first Libraries can be traced back to the civilisations of the Fertile Crescent from Mesopotamia to Egypt. The first Library dates was established in Nineveh, in modern day Iraq, capital of the great Assyrian Empire. The Library was built to store over 30,000 clay tablets in cuneiform script, covering topics such as Astronomy, Medicine, History, Religion and Epics, including the great Assyrian epic of Gilgamesh. Most of the remains from the Library at Nineveh can be seen in the British Museum as the Museum funded the excavations.
One of the most famous Libraries of the Ancient World was the Library in Alexandria, constructed in the 300s BCE by Alexander the Great’s descendants, the Ptolemies. It was designed to rival the Lyceum in Athens. Having a great Library was seen as a mark of a civilised society, just as a school would regard a Library as central to learning today. The Library was part of a bigger research centre called the Mouseion, dedicated to the Nine Muses, the goddesses of the Arts.
The idea behind the Library was that it should house all the texts ever written – it was the first universal Library. Agents were sent all over the world to collect scrolls with not just Latin and Greek texts but also Babylonian, Hebrew, Persian, Assyrian, Indian, Buddhist and Zoroastrian texts. The agents were instructed to go out all over the world and pay whatever money they needed to secure all the manuscripts they could.
As a result of their efforts the Library at Alexandria housed up to half a million papyrus scrolls. Many renowned scholars of the Ancient World worked in the Great Library at Alexandria. It was here that the epic poet Homer was codified in writing. It was here that Apollonius composed his epic the Argonautica. It was here that Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth. It was here that Hero of Alexandria invented the steam turbine. It was here that medical students first dissected human cadavers. It was here that Aristophanes of Byzantium first came up with the ingenious idea of dividing poetic texts into lines. As well as scrolls it had lecture theatres, laboratories, meeting halls, gardens and even a zoo. It was the most extraordinary centre of learning and innovation where the most brilliant minds worked. I’m going to say that it was not unlike the Ideas Hub. Though it’s a shame we don’t have a zoo. The Library at Alexandria was destroyed by a fire and scholars estimate that it took 1000 years to recover the knowledge that was lost.
A universal library, like the one in Alexandria, is one with the most inspiring and ambitious purpose. To house all the known publications in the world. It’s a noble ideal but impossible to achieve. But it’s an ideal which has shaped Libraries for centuries. In Britain today we have six libraries known as legal deposit libraries. This means that by law a copy of every book printed in Britain must be deposited in the legal deposit libraries. So although they aren’t universal libraries in that they don’t house all the books printed in the world, they can claim to house all the books printed in the country. The legal deposit libraries in Britain are The Bodleian Library in Oxford, The Cambridge University Library, The British Library, The National Libraries of Scotland and of Wales, and (although it is not in Britain) the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. What their legal deposit status means is that even though these are very august and serious libraries used by students and academics, by law they also have to have copies of every trashy novel ever written. So if you are ever using these Libraries as a student and want to have a bit of fun, you could consider the trashiest book you could order up from the Library stocks.
In our frenzied always-on modern world, Libraries offer balm for the mind and for the soul. There is something inherently soothing about a Library and when you go to visit universities I recommend you inspect the Libraries. One of the joys of my student days was touring the different libraries of Oxford. Also inspect the university bookshop. The Waterstones near Gower Street by UCL should be your benchmark. It’s 7 stories high.
In a world where we consume so much of our information online and where we are always surrounded by noise, Libraries and books offer peaceful contemplation, quiet focus, and the wonderful sensation that although we are still as we read, we are being transported on a magnificent voyage of discovery through the written word.
Matt Haig, author of the novel ‘The Midnight Library’ puts it far more eloquently than me. “So long as there are still books on the shelves, you are never trapped. Every book is a potential escape.” I hope all of you manage physical as well as literary escapes this summer. I wish you a wonderful holiday. And I will see you all in September.
