I love libraries and if they hadn't been free to use when I was growing up I would never have been able to read as much as I did. I know people (parents mostly) bought me books for birthday and Christmas, but that is only two days in the year and when I was about 7 or 8, I used to read a book every day! Especially in the holidays. Our school was very close to the public library and we were allowed to go there at lunchtime. I remember going in and looking for any new Enid Blyton book that I'd not had yet. The excitement I felt when there was more than one that I hadn't read was always commented on by the librarian! Because I often had to wait for an EB book I hadn't read I looked around at other books to read while I waited.
As an author myself, I know it can be difficult to calculate the number of books borrowed from libraries and, in my own case, photocopied (my contribution to the written world is a textbook). I wonder why Terry Deary is so against libraries? The authors association calculates an average (from libraries and photocopies) and arranges for that to be paid and I'm pretty sure he earns a good deal more than most authors from libraries.
