The death of the reading library

‘Quiet Zone: No Laptops Please’. So read the paper signs stapled as an afterthought in a dust-cloaked corner of the Radcliffe Camera. The Rad Cam is the magnificent Palladian dome at the heart of Oxford’s Bodleian Library. Set in sunlit Radcliffe Square, and surrounded on all sides by gargoyles, pinnacles and the city’s dreaming spires, it coruscates greatness. From the cobblestones below, one cannot help but feel that one is looking at the very apotheosis of the thinking world. What isn’t obvious, however, is that the Rad Cam is actually a symbol – albeit a very well-disguised one – of the death of a cherished cultural institution: the reading library.

Libraries used to be for reading books. But these days, they seem to cater to everything but. In most libraries, readers are second-class citizens. The first time I entered the Rad Cam I was deaf-struck by the sound of heavy rain echoing cacophonously about its gilded interior.