"If you think about it, public libraries are all about recycling. Books are lent out to an individual, then recycled through the system to someone else. Public libraries also act as laboratories, allowing individuals to experiment with, and ‘test out’ items before they decide to make any kind of consumer decision itself, such as buying a new book or CD or DVD or indeed, any other type of creative work. Not only this, they function as a democratic access point to information: when you enter a library you are not judged on your background, your status, or your wealth (or lack of it). You have the exact same rights of access to the information as everybody else there too. Do you realise how empowering that is? Such access to information is unbelievably powerful: and why I see public libraries as the bedrock of world citizenship. They are, without a doubt, one of the most important ideas of the 19th century (the UK’s first Public Libraries Act was in 1850 by the way) and inherently stem from concepts of The Enlightenment and The Republic of Letters, that is, universal access to knowledge. The juxtaposition that I am exploring is that although my belief system is founded upon these concepts, I’m actually living in a world and a time where we’ve been shifted from our previous state of individual citizens to individual consumers. This is a crucial distinction: issues of access are now going to be determined by your levels of engagement as a consumer not as a citizen. What might that mean? It might mean that if you don’t have the required level of wealth, you’re not going to have the same level of access to certain types of information, and information can become knowledge… and we all know where knowledge can lead… yes, to power: the power to make informed decisions about your life, your community, your health, your educational and lifelong learning needs, and much, much more.From The Itinerant Poetry Librarian's interview in Seam 30 (2009) [my bold].
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