I went to the Canterbury Public Library yesterday, as I've done since 1985. Currently, the main library building in the city centre is being refurbished. For several years, the library will be stuck in an ex-car showroom. It's inconvenient for the staff and patrons;  books,  dvd's and tapes  computers are all there - in a downsized version. There are still a couple of tables, free newspapers and a children's section at the front. They provide all the services expected of a modern library; sometimes you have to wait until a book is borrowed from another library in Kent, but you get it. The staff cope.  They cope gracefully, with courtesy and good humour.

While I stood in line to check out my books, one of the patrons harangued one of the staff. The three computers for public use are next to the check out desk. There was a computer problem. The patron was a man in his mid fifties, long hair, beard, multiple layers of clothing; he looked to be one step above sleeping under a bridge. Loudly, hostilely, the man repeated his complaint over and over.

He had come down from London. He had his files to prove his case, which he was presenting in Canterbury. He had two memory sticks that had always worked. Here, on these computers, they did not work. He had to have his files. They would prove that he was being denied £2000. in benefits, wrongly denied. But he could not download his files. There were fifty files on the screen, fifty files. How could he work?

First, he demanded more time on the computer.

The librarian helping him was a young man, probably early twenties, always polite, and not only polite but kind.

The patron could not have more time on the computer. The computers were fully booked, thirty minute segments, and the next available slot was Saturday.

"Don't you listen? I've told you. I'm from London and I've paid to come here and I have to go back. I have to have this material for my case, tomorrow."

"I'm sorry, but the computers are booked."

Then demands to know why his memory sticks didn't work. They had always worked. What was wrong with the computer?

"I don't know why it didn't work. I didn't see what you did."

Another patron, working on one of the computers, said, "Maybe your memory sticks prongs got damaged. Sometimes that happens."

Then a computer was free. I'm not sure why - I was standing in a long line to check out books, remember: this is "found interaction".

The young man said he'd sit by the patron and they'd try to download the files.

"What's the name of your file?"

"April 1."

"Put your library card in and we'll work on it."

"I don't have a library card. Why should I have a library card? I live in London."

"I'll give you a temporary library card and we'll sit down and try to figure it out."

The young man took the patron to a desk and started work on the temporary card.

All kinds of questions come up. Why was someone living in London trying to resolve a social benefits problem in Canterbury? The next day was today, Good Friday. Every thing else is closed; why not Courts or Benefits office as well? How did he get on the computer in the first place without a library card? Or did he? And was that the problem?

There are things that are not in question. The man was trying to deal with a bureaucracy and coping as best he could, with his memory sticks. It's a hard world and a very hard world for people without power. The memory sticks, the technology, at least gave him a feeling of control. Was the man crazy? Who knows? Maybe. 

The second thing not in question was the kindness of the library staff. If he had made the same hectoring loud demands in a benefits office or in a Citizen's Advice Bureau, he'd have been shuffled off, probably with a guard at his shoulder.

Nobody seemed to be afraid. Not staff, not the other clients. Librarians have a lot of experience with crazy. In a cold, wet climate, the library is one of the few public places a crazy can go. As long as he/she is not smelly, does not bring the shopping cart full of stuff in, is quite and disturbs no one, they can sit in one of the comfy chairs and read books or magazines. I've been to libraries all over the world and that seems to be the common librarian operating procedure. Sometimes they lock up the toilets, to prevent people shooting up, but it remains a place to go.

I told my husband about what happened when I went home. We tried to remember if we'd ever dealt with a rude librarian.

"University of Texas Main Library," I said.

"That was the students working there. The librarians were always nice."

I've been to public libraries in Atlanta, Austin, Berkeley, Manchester, Oldham, Auckland, Rarotonga, the British Council Libraries in Lahore and Islamabad: they are all similar. Whatever the continent, big city or small, the librarians are helpful, polite, and seem to like their work. (Maybe it's liking the work that makes the rest possible.)

Tony Blair said a lot of stupid things. One of the most stupid was to say that we no longer needed public libraries because people could afford to buy books. Tony Blair obviously does not read books.

Yesterday, I checked out a couple of murder mysteries, a couple of SF, two books by Hattersley (popular history), a book by Steven Pinker (popular linguistics) and a book of short stories by T.C. Boyle. I returned the same sort of mix, with a natural history coffee table book by David Attenborough, a guide book to Cuba and a collection of letters from the Mitford sisters.

When I was teaching, I spent my summers working on something new. One summer, I focused on the nineteen thirties and read novels, histories, diaries, biographies. Another summer, I read about the Holocaust. Another summer was devoted to the early novel. I'm probably the only non-specialist I know that I has read the entire, uncut, Pamela.(And assorted discussions of it.)

None of this would be possible without free public libraries with well-stocked shelves. Is this important? I've taught in special education and I've taught, and done research, in anthropology. There was no direct career use to my reading. An indirect impact, perhaps. I think about New Zealand differently after reading Maurice Gee. I found him browsing in the Auckland Library.

Intizar Hussain, Bapsi Sidwa, and Sara Suleri, with novels and memoirs, gave me a different picture of Pakistan - first found in the British Council Library. I bought some of them in the bazaar, but it was the library that introduced me to their work.

It was more a question of developing the famous hinterland than actually having anything to do with a career. Some of my academic colleagues read things other than professional work, some didn't. It doesn't seem to me to have much to do with their academic success. 

Libraries are probably going to be badly cut in our coming time of austerity. If I'm broke, I can re-read some of the books on my shelves. (They're there because they deserve re-reading.) I think of me when I was ten years old: I needed that library. I look at the other patrons when I go to the library. It's worth a lot to have a place where people who can't afford a newspaper can go and read it for free. It's full of mothers, with toddlers, checking out books the children chose. The notice boards in a library are an introduction to the other resources of a community. The am dram posts there; so does the bird watching society.

Libraries seem to me central to an organized, civil society, one of the few places that is not consumer driven. Libraries are one of the few places that mix social and economic class and different age groups. Libraries, like good primary education and free (or at least cheap) universities, are important for social mobility. Libraries are a source of popular fiction that provides an alternative to television; one I suspect a fairly small percentage of the population uses. But I think libraries have an impact on civil society greater than the percentage would suggest. We need them.