Let's dream. There was once a readership village. Everyone could go to a place close to their home, (...) a warm place where you could discover yourself and others, where you could learn, imagine, exchange, travel. (...) That is our people, it is France. It is up to us to exist.”

With these words from Prediku, a report is produced by French Academy member Erik Orsenna and the Inspector General of the Department of Culture of France, Noël Corbin, who appeared in February 2018, named as a travel in the village of the Libraries. At the request of lehendakari, Emmanuel Macron, the two experts have carried out a tour of the French libraries in which they have announced their State Report.

In the report, the authors point out that in France there are many people without letters. We also know that in society there is increasing indifference to literature, especially to non-contemporary literature. That is to say, in the face of the background that is most in libraries. This situation is problematic both culturally, because a people who do not know their cultural past does not have a promising future, and politically it can be a sign of democratic weakening.

In particular, Orsenna and Corbine seek to strengthen democracy in their work: they consider that libraries should be supported more to attract more people, so that France becomes a more educated and clear country. But their proposals in this regard are dubious: libraries should become spaces of well-being, besides knowing, offering comfortable informal spaces for conversation, with food and drink areas, fun games for children, sleeping areas for the exhausted, spaces dedicated to public services (reception of unemployed, mail); also, of course, a computer room that can be well equipped. What about the librarians? They should follow special training in reception to adapt to their new functions; help them to make their workplace automated splitting to open twenty-four hours a day for seven days a week; they should go to seek volunteers among the public to seek help to cope with the workload.

In other words, in the name of the development of democracy, of knowledge, of individual and social intelligence, the report by Orsenna and Corbín promotes the consumerism and profitability of libraries, belittling the librarians’ work fund, perverting mere animators or arching clients, de-accentuating libraries to put them in the hands of merchants.

In the article Bonne sieste à la bibliothèque (Le Monde Diplomatique, June 2018, 771. zb 27.orria. ), The writers Éric Dussert and Cristina Ion have deepened this evolution of libraries and demonstrate that France is following the model of the United States of America: a model that, after the objective of providing a popular education, generates a huge concurrence of large companies and private foundations.

In the region where I live, I have already shown that without volunteers the public library cannot work, but it has not yet become a market space: the people approaching are still called “reader” and not “client”. It is still time to resist the evolution that can take place in the coming months, therefore, in this corner, and we will have the best way to take the books out of the library and share the joy that is generated. Hoping that this adventure will be achieved by you too, ARGIA reader, a good summer!