Libraries are just the ticket : Shropshire Star:

The whole world gathered in one building . . . your local library is delivering its own cultural revolution, writes Ben Bentley.

Robert A Rogers has been ‘beamed up’. Sitting at his regular table in the fiction section of Shrewsbury Library, he is spoilt for a choice of books. Today he is lost in a Star Trek.

“I like all science fiction, I’m a sci-fi fan,” he explains. “Particularly ironic science fiction.”

Robert makes twice-weekly trips from his home in Bicton Heath to the library, preferring not to take books away with him but to read them while he’s here.

“I started this one a few weeks ago, it will take me about five weeks to read.”

And if someone has taken the book out next time he comes? “I go to another book I’ve started if this one is out,” he says.

Robert is perhaps the exception to a rule that sees 5,000 books lent out every week by Shrewsbury Library alone, creating a huge Hokey-Cokey of ‘old books in’ and ‘new books out’.

The year 2008 has been designated the Year of Reading, a national scheme that aims to get every one of us lost in a book.

Whether it’s a manual for self-improvement or home improvement, the county library service offers a head-spinning choice or page-turners: the shelves of county libraries are bursting with 487,725 books.

A member of the library is allowed to borrow only 10 of these per visit, so selections can be tricky - which is why aisles and aisles of bookshelves are packed with browsers whose heads are simultaneously tilted to the right. It’s a lovely sight: leaning to read book spines in what is evidently a silent, synchronised dance that precedes selection.

I join the ‘leaners’ and my own library card goes into spasms of selection envy at the sight of the Haynes Manual For The Hyundai Pony, Gary Rhodes’ Fabulous Food, Everything You Need to Know About Shingles, a romance with the intriguing title A Consultant Claims His Bride, and a book in the costume section simply called Gloves.

And that’s before going upstairs to the music and drama section, because these days it’s not just books that you find at a library.

To keep everyone happy, and to get more people using the facility, the county service has a further 34,337 items of educational or cultural value, such as DVDs and CDs.

Each and every one of these life-enriching items are all on our doorstep too. In Shropshire, 72 per cent of households live within two miles of the county’s 22 static branch libraries.

And in keeping with the principle of putting libraries at the heart of our communities, there are, in addition, library facilities at Weston Rhyn Post Office in the north of the county and at Clun Garage in the south. On top of this, seven mobile libraries make more than 600 stops at hamlets and villages across the county.

Last year’s figures show that more than 1.7 million visits were made to libraries in Shropshire; more than one-and-a-half million books borrowed, along with more than 130,000 other items taken out.

Yes, we like a good read.

“We’ve got so much choice - you can come in through the door, pick up a book and within minutes be in another world,” says librarian Sheena Batey. “That’s the great thing about books.”

Another great thing is that they are free to borrow.

Popular types of books?

Librarians like Elaine Moss are busy spreading the word “Crime thrillers are very popular,” says librarian Caroline Buckley. “They’re a bloodthirsty lot in Shropshire.”

“And ‘misery lit’, painful lives books,” adds chief librarian Elaine Moss. “When we brought them downstairs they flew off the shelves.”

If you haven’t been to a library for a while you may be surprised to discover what goes on here.

Talking, for one thing. Gone, it seems, are the days of blanket silence when you had to behave like a mute and would be singled out for a frown should you breath too loudly.

When a toddlers’ reading group gets underway in the children’s library, it’s clear that a chapter has opened called fun and expression.

Stuffiness is a thing of the past too. At Shrewsbury, open-plan informality rules; users sip coffee while reading the daily papers in the lounge area, and a shop even sells everything from bookmarks to reading glasses.

The message is that libraries are places for everyone: from toddlers to pensioners and everyone in between. A teenage library is full of books that speak the language of a group that is sometimes difficult to cater for, and which also has its own internet suite.

Due to popular demand, Shrewsbury Library is now also open on Sundays, when it is particularly popular among families.

Librarians themselves are spreading the word too. Says chief librarian Elaine Moss: “We’ve been going out to people - we went to Marks & Spencer to set up a book stand in their canteen, talk to the staff and get them to join. Some of them now come here in their lunch hour.”

Other groups, such as reading circles that include BT pensioners and a Spanish language class, regularly hire a room at the library.

There are few topics on which a book cannot be found. But if finding it proves tricky, a team of enthusiastic librarians are eager to help, although the request from one customer in the non-fiction section - “Have you got any books on anthropomorphic squirrels?” - did manage to draw a rare blank.

Other odd requests. “How many song tracks have the word ‘love’ in their title,” says librarian Sheena Buckley.

“Sometimes people don’t know the title of a book but they know what the cover looks like,” says Caroline. “We do our best to find out what it is though.”

One regular, a Jane Austen expert and scholar of her texts, was desperate to establish the name of a poem used in a TV adaptation.

“Several members of staff tried to help him and in the end we found it. He was delighted.”

Alternatively, curious visitors could always log onto one of the computers to help them find answers to their questions. After all, Google is like a librarian without the sensible shoes - although not half as much fun.

The quest for knowledge continues on the top floor in the reference library where Phil Hollins, a lecturer at Harper Adams, shuns the seats and stands up to study. He’s at his favourite window, which he likes to think Charles Darwin might have stood at when he was at Shrewsbury School, the building’s former life.