I always loved the Ilac Library, the library situated in the unlikely environment of the Ilac Centre in the middle of Dublin. Yes, it didn't seem to have any natural daylight and back in days of yore you couldn't take in any bags so you had to get a locker and cram your bag into it and it always took ages, but it had loads of books, it was in the city centre and, perhaps best of all, it was the only library in Ireland that was built over a cafe where you could get giant coke floats.
But it looks like the Central Library (as it is officially known, though everyone I know always called it the Ilac) will soon be no more. It was announced last week that there are plans to move it to a former school in Parnell Square and create a sort of cultural district with the Writer's Centre and the Hugh Lane. And even though I have fond memories of the original Ilac, I do think this is a good idea - it'll still be pretty central, and it'll be a big huge space, and you won't have to go through the increasingly manky Ilac in order to get it to it (remember when they had that fountain with a giant hot air balloon over it? And mosaics of Moore Street traders on the walls? And the Soda Fountain? Ah, those were the days).
To be honest, any new, big library is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. I've been a library devotee since before I could remember. As a kid, our nearest branch was technically Drumcondra, but my mum used to take us to the much bigger (and, it has to be admitted, much tougher) Coolock branch because it was bigger and was also handy for the Superquinn next door in Northside Shopping Centre.
Coolock was a brilliant library, with what's still one of the biggest children's sections I've ever seen. Every few weeks, my sisters and I would spend an hour choosing as many books as we could fit on our selection of library tickets. I discovered loads of my childhood favourites in those shelves, from Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess (which used to make me cry) to Diana Wynne Jones's Charmed Life. There were certain books, including those two, that my sisters and I got out so many times we almost thought we owned them. And it must have been one of the few libraries in Dublin that actually had a bouncer.
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Once I hit my teens, I stopped going to Coolock with my family and started going into town and using the Ilac instead. My best friend and I would spend ages browsing the circular racks of paperbacks, taking out random titles that interested us, discovering new authors and favourites with every visit. The best thing about libraries is the way they allow you to take chances with new writers - if you get a book and you don't like it, you just take it back and try another one.
These days, I head to my local library rather than the Ilac, but I'm still a regular user. I love the way inter library loan system allows me to reserve pretty much any book online and collect it a few days later; I love chatting with the librarians about books. I love being able to read books that I don't necessarily want to keep forever. I love browsing the new arrivals (seriously, libraries get loads of brand new books).
And I love that it's still, in an age where everything is increasingly expensive, totally free. The fact that there are these big buildings full of books and anyone can take home pretty much all of them for nothing still seems kind of magical to me. It's a reminder that though I was lucky enough to grow up with parents who always gave us books, for many kids (including my own dad, back in the 1950s) libraries are the only way of getting hold of something to read. Libraries open minds, and entertain. All for free.
Well, unless you, like me, are really bad at getting books back on time and wrack up big fines. But that's my fault.
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So what about you? Were you a library lover as a kid? And if so, did you fall out of the habit or are you still a devoted borrower?
