Tweeting about the petition to defend the Library of Birmingham and its archives led me to a petition to save the Imperial War Museum library.

I had just been re-reading Sebastian Faulks’ introduction to his WW1 book ‘Birdsong’:

“I wrote Birdsong…in a sort of frenzy, completing about 1500 words each morning, then taking the Tube to the Imperial War Museum and reading documents from the enormous collection until the reading room closed. At night I dreamt I was in a trench.”

Now that reading room is under threat. Please consider supporting the on-line petition (it can be signed from abroad).

A search of change.org using ‘library’ as the search term produced 7,690 results. It’s time our politicians realised that even in the Internet age, libraries and archives are important. Without archives, we have no history. Without history, we cannot make democracy work. We have to learn and remember the lessons of the past.