In October 2007 a report published by Booktrust found that 92% of UK secondary schools and 61% of primary schools were spending far below the recommended figures per head on books for their libraries.

Meanwhile, a third of respondents reported that the person who ran the primary school library did not have specialist knowledge of children's literature. In secondary schools, 22% of respondents had no special knowledge of children's literature.

When I was nine I was banned from the library. It was my school library, run primly and properly by a Head Librarian - with a little bit of help from a slim cohort of my fellow boarding school peers. They, however, were also School Prefects, and therefore just as much held in awe by me as the Head Librarian herself. It was the fault of Franklin W. Dixon that I was banned from this library. For upon closer inspection, it had been discovered by said Head Librarian that I had a distinct predilection for The Hardy Boys. Distinct, as in, by age nine I had already amassed a personal library of forty of these titles and was well-prepared to stick with brothers Frank and Joe through thick and thin to the end of my days. Not in and of itself such a terrible thing for a nine year old girl - one might think - but au contraire according to my Head Librarian. For in her steely eyes (or I should, technically, say 'eye' as one was definitely glass!) they were deemed unworthy of my budding pre-pubescent mind. Consequently, one fine summer day, as I dawdled at her desk with the latest Dixon title under my arm, I was alarmed to be told in no uncertain terms that I was to be banned from the library on sight. Unless, "UNLESS" she re-iterated - looking straight at me with a small but solid smile - I agreed to take out from the library any other book.

As any parent, and child-acquainted adult knows, challenging a child can be a dangerous thing if you are not fully prepared for the consequences. Luckily, my Head Librarian was a Librarian Extraordinaire and what it meant was this: we resolved our differences by rising to the challenges we set each other. In immediate retaliation (at being told what to do, rather than any sense of loyalty to old F.W.D. it has to be said) I resolved to borrow from this library simply the biggest book I could find. The Complete Penguin Book of Detective Short Fiction, at one thousand and seventeen pages, was not only the largest thing I could find, but the longest thing I'd ever attempted to read so far in my nine year life. So I stormed back to her desk, slammed it down and gave her my own small, solid, smile back. What, of course, I wasn't prepared for was the reaction she then gave. This steely Librarian, all polished and perfect and perfectly stern suddenly lifted both hands off her desk, and after slightly skimming the cover of my book - as if, almost, in admiration - she then gave me a thumbs up, not with just one hand, but with two.

Although I did not, it has to be said, actually enjoy reading this book, what it marked was a true turning point in my reading habits - which had, up until that wonderful intervention, somewhat stalled in Dixon-Blyton-but-not-much-beyond land. A conversion to a whole new wonderful literature world soon found me welcoming the advances of Rosemary Sutcliffe, Robert Cormier, Robert Westall, Michelle Magorian, Alan Garner, Jan Marks, Susan Cooper and Ursula Le Guin (to name just a few of the amazing authors who filled me brimful with imagination at that age and beyond). I, of course, never looked back, but looking back now I recognise the importance of that Head Librarian intervention, and I am thankful that she was so knowledgeable, as well as so kind and so, so wise.

Posted by: Sara Wingate Gray

One of the downsides to carrying around everything you need to live on your own back is the fact there's not really very much room for fitting in a nice, big fat hardback of your latest favourite author's work. Carting a poetry library around too, alongside these banal life accoutrements (which include socks, a sleeping bag, and the indispensable goose feather stuffed booties, amongst many other things) does little to negate this fact, as no matter how much of a poetry fan you are, there are just some times when you want to slip in to something a little more, well, substantial - and even the best beast of a poetry anthology behemoth just won't do. So when the wonderful world of fiction strikes, and I need to find a worthy tome to idle my hours away, it is, of course, wherever my 'local' library is that I inevitably find myself wandering down to. A quick stroke of the shelves, a perusal of the 'new fiction / just in' section and after a mere five minutes often my arms are full of affable, amusing, and downright tasty nuggets of nutritious, creative works ready for me to dive in to. But what happens when I'm in a non-English speaking country, as I found myself in 2006?

Hopping from Amsterdam to Berlin, thence to Dresden, Prague, Vienna and Budapest, operating my travelling poetry library in each of these cities, there were some nights, after a good, long hard day slaving away at my own library, when I just wanted to switch off and jump in to a good book. Of course, many libraries in capital, or metropolitan cities, have a 'foreign language' section, but it's never as good as the main collections of the library overall: so often, when out wandering the vast plains of Europe, I have found myself making use of the British Council Libraries. In particular, I made distinctive use of the BC's Berlin headquarters and library back in June 2006, not only borrowing some enticing reads from their collection for myself, but also installing my library itself too. A week based in their library's space saw me signing up new members to my library within the environs of their own, providing my first (and soon to be favourite) shot at operating perhaps the quintessence of library service itself: two libraries in one!

What also always astounded me about the countries and cities I visited was the extent to which the English Language had permeated beyond borders, boundaries and well, books. It was a welcoming surprise to find the English language reaching the parts other tongues might not dare speak (so to speak) and a number of independently published English Language Literary magazines stand out as championing poetry and literature in translation.

'Blatt' in Prague, 'sub dream' (Vienna's English Language Literary Journal) and 'Pilvax' (Budapest-based) are three great reads for the English reading and writing connoisseur, specializing in publishing writing in English and translations from or to the original language alongside (which might include Czech, Austrian-German, Hungarian and indeed any other European tongue that makes it through the editorial process). Similarly, many poets I met - and especially in Budapest - were keen to emphasize their multi-lingual skills, and from speaking to two Hungarian poets living there it was clear that writing in both Hungarian and English was, for them, an obvious choice - so it seems that English as a global language may well indeed have got a glottal stop or two ahead of the game.

The British Council's longstanding and exemplary teaching of English programmes, as well as the wonderful resource that is their many and manifold English Language Libraries, have, no doubt, played a huge part in this process. Reading recently of another British Council Library closure in Europe however, reminded me of the first story I read last year about the BC's new 'development' programme: reallocating funding from their EU, India and Africa based Libraries to a new priority of, yes you guessed it, the Middle East. While I can't argue that providing an English Language Library service in such places as Iraq, Afghanistan and Bangladesh is anything but an illustrious idea, what is incongruous about it is the perceived need to give with one hand on one side of the world, while taking away with the other, on the other.

I'll leave it to ole Aristotle to have the last words: "One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day."

Posted by: Sara Wingate Gray

As a lover of all things word-related, one of my favourite pastimes, of course, is settling down to read a good book. What I love about this experience also, however, is the different ways in which one can come to the act of reading itself. Foremost, at least for me, is the book-you-have-been-saving experience: more often than not this is heralded by the new release of a favoured author’s latest hardback, and might find me either legging it to my nearest bookshop on the release date of the title, or - at least in yonder days before I became a travelling library – see me squatting on my doorstep in anticipation of the postman delivering it from Amazon, having ordered it months in advance. A new A.M. Homes, Paul Auster or Haruki Murakami falling into my clammy paws always has the self-same exhilarating effect - a strange mix of heady anticipation at the potential verbal delights to come, countered by slight hesitancy: for picking the perfect moment to begin such a book is almost as important as the act of reading it itself. Sitting on such a title until that deadline, that appointment, that can’t-be-cancelled meeting has passed is really one of the most difficult things to do, and requires some self-discipline.

As with any of my other favourite authors (Graham Greene, José Saramago – I could go on but I’d better stop here for now…) encountering a new literary world of a well-loved and remembered author-consort is something which, when it comes to dipping a toe in the tide, or hurling myself off the proverbial linguistic cliff, I find the cliff winning out every time – and what a wonderful dash it often is. Engaging in such an encounter requires, above all else, free time, and the opportunity to lend oneself to the world of an author’s characters, their lives and their living. For it is when you are truly submerged in this world of the other I believe, that you are most able to forget, and yet find, some parts of yourself. This is the mark of both a good book and a great author one might take the time to argue, if one wasn’t still engrossed in finishing off the final chapter - perhaps with a cup of tea by one’s side ready to redress the inevitable frisson of bittersweet elation, at the finality of completing such a book.

Meanwhile, an unexpected brush with a never-before-read author can be a whole other revelatory relishing. The accidental encounter, whether by word of mouth, bookswap, “bookcrossing,” a book club, or literally having one thrown at one’s feet (or, in the case of how I came to meet Haruki Murakami’s books – being hit on the head by one falling from a Hong Kong library shelf) invigorates and quickens both the head and the heart. When with it comes the knowledge that this is a literary landscape hitherto untouched – well, something joyful and almost child-like in me begins to jump up and down with expectant excitement. For there is nothing else as the awareness that, at some indefinable future date, you and this new intimate may, once more, meet.

Posted by: Sara Wingate Gray

Visiting some UK libraries this week, I was struck by the vitality of each distinct location. An excited, and excitable, post-Christmas throng of teenagers armed the Teen section of the Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library, lolling on sofas to the side of the main entrance, eyeing up the latest graphic novel and manga additions, and, no doubt, each other.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, a minor mini-crisis was being swiftly averted by that day's Duty Manager Librarian: within minutes the public printers were back online, tannoy announcements informed everyone of the solved situation, and the East Anglian public happily continued tapping away on their terminals out front.

A visit with two under-tens to their local branch library, south of the river Thames in London, conjured a completely different scenario: piles of children's books spilled over the soft floor coverings as the silence of a small branch library was suddenly perforated with delighted shrieks. Small hands skimmed the shelves with haste, pulling out new books by favourite authors until we'd created our very own overspill too. A hop, skip and a jump (well, several jumps for the six year old) over to the circulation desk, to take out our books, also gave me a chance to observe another librarian's stamping technique. Visiting the library again meant another stamp on our special children's library card and we'd only one gap left to fill. So now it was complete. There were more delighted shrieks. A completed card meant we got to choose a fee-free DVD to borrow alongside our reading material. Decamping back to home base the chants of "SpongeBob SquarePants, SpongeBob SquarePants" caused puffs of hot breath to shimmer like frozen jellyfish in the cold air of our London street.

Whether serving a whole city's community as a central information point, or a small, diverse local clientele as its nearest accessible resource, a library functions best responding directly to the needs of its specific user group, its patrons, who place trust in the library's ability to gauge their needs, their knowledge-acquisition requirements. Knowledge, trust, friendliness, vitality: these are words I value, traits I look for in the people I meet, and, I'm happy to report, ably on offer at these two libraries I ventured into while enjoying the season's holidays.

I am always surprised by the diversity of library experience, whether it's visiting libraries on home ground, or venturing further afield to explore what Barcelona, Berlin, or San Francisco offer in the library exploration stakes. I wonder what other interesting community libraries are out there I have yet to visit - certainly the mule libraries of Venezuela (known as bibliomulas) are top of my list, and I'd love to hear from readers about their own interesting library experiences, so do get in touch if you've one special library place that should just not be missed!

Posted by: Sara Wingate Gray