Colm O'Regan: Libraries are a tonic in these mad times

Yes, the book you want is there, but you’ll have to wait until the other person brings it back. When is that? When they’ve finished with it. It’s good to be told you have to share, as a grown-up

It’s like living in the future. Access to every book in the country? Just log in and ask for it.

Whenever I’m down, I think about the library. Not because I want to go there right now. I do. But that’s not the point. It just makes me feel good that libraries exist. In this cold and often above-average rainfall world, it’s a warm place.

“They” reckon libraries started, like most things, in Nineveh in Mesopotamia (in Iraq) about 5,000 years ago, and were largely storing clay tablets.