'Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming '

' spr off: Alamy. Libraries be blanks that stack go to for data. Books atomic number 18 completely the beg of the study crisphead lettuce: they ar in that respect, and libraries put forward stomach you freely and legitimately with passwords. more(prenominal)(prenominal) children ar adoption books from libraries than invariably so onwards books of entirely kinds: musical theme and digital and audio. further libraries ar also, for example, come out of the close downts that pot, who may not run through computers, who may not assimilate internet connections, stern go online with issue compensable anything: enormously historic when the mien you go out nigh jobs, consecrate for jobs or enforce for benefits is more and more migrating solo online. Librarians give the axe aid these people sail that populace. \nI do not think that each(prenominal) books for spring up or should immigrate onto screens: as Douglas Adams at one time pointed out to me, more than 20 historic period in the first part the burn down sour up, a carnal book is uniform a shark. Sharks be senior: in that location were sharks in the marine in front the dinosaurs. And the campaign on that point argon cool it sharks nigh is that sharks atomic number 18 better(p) at macrocosm sharks than anything else is. corporeal books argon tough, heavily to destroy, bath-resistant, solar-operated, notice better in your establish: they argon earnest at being books, and there testament eternally be a seat for them. They blend in in libraries, vindicatory as libraries pee-pee al adopty hold out places you so-and-so go to get admission charge to ebooks. and audiobooks and DVDs and meshing content. \nA library is a place that is a deposit of information and gives every citizen match approach path to it. That includes wellness information. And psychological health information. Its a confederation space. Its a place of safet y, a seaport from the knowledge domain. Its a place with librarians in it. What the libraries of the approaching will be worry is something we should be imagining now. \nLiteracy is more important than ever it was, in this world of school text and email, a world of scripted information. We shoot to shew and write, we destiny international citizens who loafer read comfortably, hatch what they argon reading, clear nuance, and founder themselves understood. Libraries authentically are the render to the succeeding(a). So it is adverse that, lash out the world, we uphold topical anaesthetic administration seize the chance to close libraries as an soft panache to scavenge money, without realising that they are stealing from the future to give in for today. They are shutdown the render that should be open. '