“What’s more punk than a public library?” It’s a refrain that can be traced back a few years to T-shirts sold in Washington DC to raise money for a local branch. The design, based on a librarian’s zine table, can now be found on everything from mugs to tote bags.

In theory, public libraries are, in fact, pretty punk. They are non-commercial, non-clinical third spaces where anyone can go to warm up, use the wifi, go to the bathroom, and have untapped access to a world of books – all for free. No need to buy a beverage.

These days, that a public library is even open is an inherent act of resistance. Keeping the doors open, allowing people to access information without surrendering personal data, and existing as an uncommercial space is radical.

But public libraries require a (very un-punk) tangle of bureaucracy to run and are very much part of the mundane systems of local government. Victim to the death-by-a-thousand-cuts reality of nearly every government department under austerity, we have been letting our libraries die.

According to the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC), 55 libraries have been lost in Scotland since 2013/14. Funding is down 30 per cent and staff numbers are down by a third. Many of the ones that are left are operating on skeleton hours. In Glasgow, the pandemic saw the council’s arm’s-length body, Glasgow Life, close 101 out of 171 venues, including libraries and community centres. When lockdown ended, 62 remained shut, and 31 of them were in the most deprived areas.

Parallel to the library crisis, the country is facing a severe literacy crisis. The literacy gap between schoolchildren in the most and least deprived areas stands at around 20 per cent,........

© Herald Scotland