26 rolled her eyes. “Not so little, mate. She really knows her stuff. Getting
good grades, apparently.”“Really? I thought you said you were in trouble at school?”
She giggled. “I started checking out library books and bringing ’em down to the
MP’s surgery, and did all my studying in his waiting room. At first I just did
it to prove a point, but now the library’s only open four days a week, it
worked out to be a brilliant place to get work done. Hardly anyone ever goes
down there. His receptionist kind of adopted me and ticked him off any time he
tried to get me to leave.”I remembered the heft of her rucksack. “You didn’t bring a load of library
books to London with you?”She looked horrified. “Of course not. That’d be stealing. My bag’s full of
discards — it’s shocking what they’re getting rid of. No funding, you see.
Taking ’em off the shelves is cheaper than re-shelving them, so the collections
keep on shrinking. There’s always some gobshite at the council meetings saying,
‘what do we need libraries for if everyone’s got the Internet?’ I keep wanting
to shake them by the hair and shout something like, ‘Everyone except me! And
what about all the stuff librarians have to teach us about using the net?'”
—Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow
