“What’s more punk than a public library?” It’s a refrain that can be traced back a few years to T-shirts sold in Washington DC to raise money for a local branch. The design, based on a librarian’s zine table, can now be found on everything from mugs to tote bags.

In theory, public libraries are, in fact, pretty punk. They are non-commercial, non-clinical third spaces where anyone can go to warm up, use the wifi, go to the bathroom, and have untapped access to a world of books – all for free. No need to buy a beverage.

These days, that a public library is even open is an inherent act of resistance. Keeping the doors open, allowing people to access information without surrendering personal data, and existing as an uncommercial space is radical.

But public libraries require a (very un-punk) tangle of bureaucracy to run and are very much part of the mundane systems of local government. Victim to the death-by-a-thousand-cuts reality of nearly every government department under austerity, we have been letting our libraries die.

According to the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC), 55 libraries have been lost in Scotland since 2013/14. Funding is down 30 per cent and staff numbers are down by a third. Many of the ones that are left are operating on skeleton hours. In Glasgow, the pandemic saw the council’s arm’s-length body, Glasgow Life, close 101 out of 171 venues, including libraries and community centres. When lockdown ended, 62 remained shut, and 31 of them were in the most deprived areas.

Parallel to the library crisis, the country is facing a severe literacy crisis. The literacy gap between schoolchildren in the most and least deprived areas stands at around 20 per cent, which is grim for attainment. That people, and children especially, are losing access to these enchanting places is nothing short of a disaster. The library was the first place that, as a small child, I had agency. I had freedom. I always wanted to be a grown-up and be able to run off on my own adventures. And thanks to the library, I could.

I would spend hours wandering the aisles, scanning every spine for one that stood out like an easter egg. Piqued by the cover, I would move on to reading the back, then the first page, before deciding that this precious volume would also be added to my growing stack of books.

I followed siblings Jack and Annie on their Magic Tree House adventures, exploring the Middle Ages or the wild west. I devoured every Goosebumps book I could get my hands on. I read The Hatchet series by Gary Paulsen over and over, becoming obsessed with wilderness survival. The library card is the only one in my wallet whose limit I can max out with wild abandon.

Children need to be able to discover books that they like, and the library is what allows them to do that. Not everyone likes everything – I have vivid flashbacks of throwing a tantrum every time I had to read Jane Austen in high school.

Reading for pleasure in Scotland is in freefall. But as an avid reader, I want to cry out that maybe young people are not being given enough opportunity to figure out what kind of books they like. We need to start them young, get them hooked on disappearing for hours into the pages of a book, before it is too late.

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A 2025 Scotland-specific report from the National Literacy Trust found that just 30 per cent of eight- to 18-year-olds enjoyed reading in their free time and only 17 per cent read daily. The think tank Enlighten dubbed the situation a “reading crisis hiding in plain sight” and estimated that up to 30 per cent of secondary students are reading two or more years below their age level. Research from HarperCollins published in 2025 found that nearly one in three children aged five to 13 think reading is “more a subject to learn than a fun thing to do”, up from 25 per cent in 2022. The publisher says the growing association of reading with “pressure rather than pleasure” is contributing to the sweeping disengagement.

Anecdotally, I hear from teacher friends who feel hamstrung by parents who complain that even novellas are “too long”. They don’t seem to care much about what their children are learning as long as they get the grades to go to university. This mentality again strips the beauty, joy, and endless entertainment that can be found between the pages of a book.

Councils are supposed to provide an “adequate” public library service, but as it turns out, no one really knew what “adequate” meant – the term was never legally defined. To help the country avert the risk of libraries being decimated entirely, the SLIC has handed the Scottish Government a 10-part plan for saving these vital institutions. In addition to defining what a public library should do, the report makes suggestions about developing a proper strategy, figuring out what having “adequate” libraries in our 32 local authorities costs, and then actually funding them sufficiently.

So with all of the tools laid out in the open, it is time for Culture Secretary Angus Robertson to step up to the plate. Because who benefits from a nationwide lack of literacy and dismal public access to information and books?

A population that is unable to read deeply and widely, and that lacks access to good-quality information, is easier to manipulate. Anti-democratic movements thrive on low civic literacy. When libraries close and reading for pleasure is chucked out the window like a cigarette butt, we become a country of consumers and not citizens.

Populations need the tools to scrutinise the claims that fly around unchecked on social media from politicians, big business, and the other blowhards with X accounts. It is a lot easier to push through cuts and bad policy when your electorate is unable to read the fine print.

Any public library that is still open is a punk library. There is nothing more profoundly democratic, anti-capitalist, and anti-authoritarian than a space where anyone can access resources and warmth for free. We are lost if we lose them.

Marissa MacWhirter is a columnist and feature writer at The Herald, and the editor of The Glasgow Wrap. The newsletter is curated between 5-7am, bringing the best of local news to your inbox each morning without ads, clickbait, or hyperbole. Oh, and it’s free. She can be found on X @marissaamayy1

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