Long before the free-for-all of the Internet’s vast troves of information, and long before Wikipedia, the library was humanity’s memory. It was where we kept our data and where millennia of scholars stored our collective wisdom. Libraries are to civilisation what books are to people: sources of information, of inspiration, of learning. Collectively, like books, they are the hard drives of our experience and knowledge. Libraries have always been a kind of sanctuary for me and millions of other students. Trite as it sounds, the pursuit of knowledge was a library’s prime reason for being. When I was a university student, it was where reference works, background material and fascinating studies were stored. Everything the hungry mind of a student could ever want was in a library. When I was in school, it was the only place you could find encyclopaedias and illustrated textbooks. I was one of those children labelled a bookworm; I read my way through school. I first got glasses a few mont...
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