Garth George: Why the best libraries can be dangerous

I hate winter. I detest the cold and the damp and the wind and the invariable grey skies to the extent that by this time of the year my mindset has taken on the same hue as the rain-filled clouds.

When God created the heavens and the Earth and all the seasons, I reckon he should have left winter out. If I could, I would live some place where it is summer all the year round.

I did for a year or two back in the 1980s - Rockhampton in central Queensland and Townsville in north Queensland. There, winter consisted of a few weeks when it was more comfortable to wear a jersey or jacket in the cool of the evening.

The rest of the year it was shirt and shorts day and night, fans in the ceiling or air-conditioning, and temperatures every day from the high 20s to the low 40s.

This winter, which unfortunately still has more than two months to go, has been particularly unpleasant. For the past several years my home has been heated by a log-burner, which in no time at all would warm the whole house.

But the home I have now has no such appliance and, being two-storeyed, does not lend itself to the installation thereof and I'm afraid electric heaters, no matter the wattage and sophistication, just don't cut it.

There is, however, one great benefit of winter. When the weather is foul and the things to be done around the place have to be put off for another week, I don't need an excuse to turn up the heat, collapse into an armchair and read a book.

Reading is one of my life's greatest pleasures and our move back into Auckland City has put at our disposal for free once again the wonderful resources of the Auckland City libraries - including their magnificent website.

I have loved and haunted libraries since I was old enough to read, so it was a pleasure the other day to receive from an American friend an email which reminded me of all the reasons why that is so.

My friend Jack retires at the end of this week as administrator (the equivalent of our chief librarian) of a substantial suburban library in Chicago, a job he has done and loved for 34 years.

He sent me a copy of the speech he is making to a large number of staff, library-users, friends and well-wishers who will attend his farewell function.

And because I know it will bring joy to the hearts of all those newspaper readers who, like me, are also library-haunters and book-lovers, I record an excerpt here.

"Libraries," he says, "are many things. To some they are meaningless or, worse, an anachronism. 'Why,' these cry, 'do I need a liberry when I got the internet?"

"To the uninitiated they are confusing beyond words, and to the uninformed they are that cliched 'vast storehouse of knowledge' - whatever that is supposed to mean.

"But they are so much more. They are one of society's noble, living and mysterious enterprises - with a price beyond rubies.

"If libraries are doing their job right they are dangerous places. They present you with ideas you may not like, they challenge your assumptions, and make you think.

"Libraries possess the strength and power to lift up people's hearts and minds, occasionally stirring a soul or two.

"What do libraries mean? What does a great work of art mean? Why can an Emily Dickinson poem make you cry? Why do we read and reread our favourite books? Why does a Picasso painting affect you? Who can really explain why a symphony moves your soul, or why on 'grey days' we get the 'blues'?

Why does a sunrise or sunset over the ocean take our breath away?

"Questions like that have vastly different answers for each of us and speak to the heart of life's meaning.

"Libraries are just as enigmatic, just as beguiling. They represent exactly the same kind of intellectual mystery that those questions ask.

"What do libraries mean? In my vision and in my life libraries mean many things. A simple description would contain euphemistic phrases such as 'the power of literature and the beauty of language'. Well, that's true but to me libraries mean so much more.

"Libraries mean the completion of our victory over illiteracy.

"Libraries trumpet our art, our culture and our science - all those crucial values that move and inspire our lives.

"Libraries display our firm knowledge of the past, and our concern for the future.

"Libraries reveal our ability to learn and to pass on what we know to our children, and their children.

"Libraries demonstrate an endless curiosity about the nature of our world itself and the creative passions of humanity.

"Libraries are endless recreation, magic carpet and time machine.

"Libraries are a telescope to see across the world, or a microscope to reveal what is unseen.

"Libraries connect all of us to each other, and reach back so the past can speak to us.

"Libraries are a land filled with the promise of endless possibility, where each of us has been granted property rights.

"Libraries are like a work of art and encompass within themselves strong messages of commitment that are transcendent, passionate and meaningful.

"But more, to me, at their core libraries are celebrations. They are a celebration of our accomplishments, they celebrate and record our creative endeavours, our joys and sorrows, the absolute wonder of life itself.

"And what I have learned in the past 34 years is that we need libraries today more than ever."

Amen, I say, to that.