Rosemary Bramley’s eyes fill with tears as she tells me she likes having a book “for company” since her husband died four months ago.
The 90-year-old was paying one last visit to Cults Library.
It’s a place she’s been back and forth to for 53 years, and that will close for good within days.
Across town, I meet eight-year-old Arya Grassie.
Woodside Library is her “calm place”, where she goes to forget her troubles after a tough day at school.
The doors will be closed to Arya as of Thursday.
She and Rosemary are just two of the dozens of people I spoke to at the Aberdeen libraries being closed by the council.
Around their limited opening hours, I’d planned out a timetable that would allow me to work from all six facilities across four days, to get a feel for how they are used and meet the people who hold them dear.
By the end of the week, they’ll all be shut.
During my week with the people affected by the Aberdeen library closures:
- I spoke to a Turkish mum who learns English by reading the books her young son borrows.
- A Northfield couple married for 64 years pay a final visit to their local library.
- And I’m there when dozens of children arrive with heartwarming home-made cards for the staff they’ve come to know over the years.
Day One: Cults Library on Tuesday morning
I drove to Cults Library on the morning of Tuesday, March 21. It was the first warm day Aberdeen had seen in months.
The library opened in 1966, and the first thing to catch my eye was a display documenting its history, set up after news of its closure broke.
I meet Rosemary as she’s looking over the board, each black and white newspaper cutting taking her back decades.
“I first came here in 1970,” she tells me.
“My husband died four months ago, so it’s quite lonely at home.
“It’s been a tough time.
“It’s really nice to have a decent book to read, and the staff are wonderful. They always suggest something they think I’ll like.”
Nowadays she needs large print books, and will have to board a bus to Peterculter to keep borrowing them.
Little Ola has grown up in Cults Library
I’m working in a corner backing onto shelves of hardback fiction novels when I meet Polish dad Pawel Bialek.
Pawel has been taking daughter Ola, 10, to Cults Library since she was a tot.
It’s played a huge role in her childhood – and her dad smiles as he explains it’s where she fell in love with the magical world of Harry Potter.
Their bags bulging with books, they depart, and a mum appears with her two boys to return their final loans.
Another long-serving customer pokes their head in the door and shouts across to staff: “You must be fed up of people coming in here and ranting!”
Retired accountant Joyce Gowans isn’t usually the type of person to stick her head above the parapets…
But she tells me she’s been so moved by the plight of her local library that she’s been signing petitions, writing letters and is planning to have her say at the next community council meeting.
Explaining her unexpected foray into activism, she says: “This is something worth fighting for.”
Cults Library has only opened up on Mondays and Tuesdays since being closed during the pandemic.
Truth be told, it wasn’t very busy that morning.
But library attendance can be fickle, and sometimes all it takes is a bit of sunshine to make visitors dry up for a day.
I’m told that on the gloomy day prior, the place was as busy as ever.
Tuesday afternoon in Kaimhill Library
That afternoon, I arrive in the more modern Kaimhill Library – the newest of the six soon to close.
After logging in to one of the free computers, I Google the library to find out just when it was built.
I stumble upon an old news story which feels relevant in the circumstances.
Shortly after its 2011 opening, alarm bells were already ringing about the lack of usage.
The council’s library operations manager spoke of an “action plan” to boost footfall at the “hidden away” facility.
Now it’s about a decade on, but maybe it’s never really been resolved.
This seems to be confirmed a few days later when I meet a mum-of-two in Northfield Library.
She tells me she just moved to the area from Garthdee six months ago.
The woman and her children love books, but they had no idea Kaimhill Library existed.
But other factors are no doubt at play…
The situation was maybe best summed up in a chat I had with a Garthdee woman as she collected a book she’d ordered.
She told me she used to come often, but her visits have grown more seldom in the last few years.
I ask why that is.
“Well,” she shrugs apologetically… “I got my Kindle.”
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Day Two: Wednesday in Woodside Library
It’s Wednesday lunchtime and I’m heading up Clifton Road from my flat in Kittybrewster to Woodside Library.
By now, word has spread that there’s a P&J reporter working from the libraries and the staff here are ready for me – apologising that they only have oat milk as they offer a cup of tea.
They seem happier about this project than the council’s rather antsy communications team.
Gazing up at the ornate ceiling of the 140-year-old building, you could be forgiven for thinking you’re in a church.
And it’s certainly a sanctuary for eight-year-old Arya Grassie, who pops in with her mum Jennifer.
Arya goes to Woodside Primary School, just across the road, and visits regularly after lessons – especially if she’s had a hard day.
“I come here when I’m upset,” she says.
Jennifer picks up: “She was quite sad when I told her it was closing.
“Arya has been coming here since she started at the nursery, so that’s about five years.”
Looking at her daughter, she adds: “You like all the ladies, and they all know you.
“You like your ‘calm place’.”
Arya explains: “Every time I read a book, it teaches me how to read better. Then I can figure out the next one too.
“I like everything really… Books about wildlife, maths and space.”
It’s her home away from home, and she exits with a fresh bundle after each visit.
This time, Arya heads off to make a card for the librarians she has come to know as friends.
‘I’m a widow now, so I’m on my own…’
“Still no reprieve, I don’t suppose?”
Susan Sloan announces her arrival with a hopeful enquiry. No luck, she’s told.
The 74-year-old started visiting more often after retiring from her job in social work.
For her the closure is a bitter pill to swallow, as she and a handful of others had only just started a book group.
She explains: “I’m a widow now, so I’m on my own.
“I’d been enjoying the group, it’s been a good way to meet people.”
Susan, a “great Ian Rankin fan”, heads off to the crime section in search of her latest page-turner as Aileidh Davidson pushes a buggy through the door.
‘It’s really lovely for him’
Aileidh and two-year-old Findlay attended a protest against the closure days before.
They visit every Wednesday. It’s their routine.
She says: “It’s really lovely for him, especially as he’s been able to see other kids reading.
“He can be a bit rambunctious sometimes but mostly he’s good as gold.”
The head of the local community council nips in to ask about footfall figures. They’re building their own case to save the library, and she seems pleased with what she hears.
Meanwhile dad Fraser Clark, from Hilton, reads to four-year-old Lillan while his beaming one-year-old Innes toddles wobbly-legged around the children’s section.
Alan Walker, 82, was “absolutely shocked” when he heard the library was closing.
“I’m not in the first flush of youth, so it’s a bit of a blow having to go somewhere else,” he says.
“I think it’s a damn disgrace.”
As I leave Woodside Library, there’s a news report on the radio about how freshly-unearthed historic documents could offer some hope for its future.
Day Three: Thursday morning in Northfield Library
It’s bright sunshine again as I arrive in Northfield.
The first thing I notice are the rows of sheltered accommodation across from the library, and I wonder if many users come from there.
It’s barely past the 10am opening time but the mum I mentioned earlier (who didn’t know about Kaimhill) is already here – with her eight-year-old daughter, four-year-old son and a huge plastic bag of educational books.
She digs out her phone to confirm they’ve taken out 145 loans in the last six months.
Just a few years after the building opened in 1955, John and Isobel Thomson were married in the church across the road.
I meet them 64 years later.
They can’t get around too well these days (John is 87 and Isobel 86) and won’t be able to attend another library, so they’re signing up for the home delivery service.
It’s a source of frustration for John, who likes Westerns and war novels, as he won’t be able to browse the same.
He tells me: “I come every week. I won’t be able to go to the others, and I’m not online.
“I wish we had been asked about this before the decision was made, I’m stuck without it.”
Now the library is closing, and there are plans to knock down the church yards away.
As John and Isobel shuffle out, there’s a queue of P4/5 pupils from the nearby West Park Primary School making their way in.
They’ve brought with them a stack of home-made bright yellow cards, each emblazoned with hand-written messages thanking staff and saying how much they will miss their visits.
As the children read in one corner, and a librarian strings up the cards like oversized bunting at the doorway, Edith Kemp heads over for a chat.
‘It gets me out’
The 85-year-old, who uses a rollator, is such an avid reader that she once missed a flight because she was so engrossed in a story.
Edith tells me she likes to walk to the Northfield building, before getting the bus home.
“It gets me out”, she adds.
“I like to be out.”
There’s a loud chorus of “thaaaaank youuu” as the children leave the building for the last time.
Unusually, you might think for a library, their departure is the first time it’s been quiet all day.
Thursday afternoon in Cornhill Library
“Oh my goodness!”
Keziban Suntay has just asked the librarian at Cornhill if the building is really closing, and she can’t hide her heartbreak at the news.
Keziban has been coming here with her son Bulnut since he was two, and he’s 12 now.
The youngster has gone from Postman Pat DVDs to books about science as he’s grown.
But when I ask what material he enjoys the most, Keziban simply reaches out an arm and gestures around the entire multi-coloured children’s section.
The mum moved to Aberdeen from Turkey in 2008, and has been learning English by reading whatever Bulnut has just finished.
Keziban says: “When he reads them, I start them again. It helps my English, and when I don’t know some words I check the dictionary…”
Looking around her, she sighs: “I’m just so upset.”
Who else visits Cornhill Library as Aberdeen closures loom?
I pick up a book about Jamie Fleeman, the Laird of Udny’s Fool, from the local history section.
There are dates going back to the early 80s stamped on the inside cover, back when it was in the Stockethill Library collection.
There’s a woman working away next to me, using one of the free computers.
I wait until she’s finished, and ask her why she comes here.
The pensioner doesn’t have the internet at home, so visits “for an hour or two some days” to deal with some of life’s essentials online.
In the hour before closing, a dad and his two children are perusing the collection, a retiree is leafing through that day’s P&J and another man is clacking away at one of the computers.
Day Four: Friday in Ferryhill Library
It’s bucketing down as I cycle from our Marischal Square office to Ferryhill Library.
My visit comes the week after a “read in” to protest the closure, and as efforts to save it gather pace with just a week until it closes for good.
The B-listed building dates back to 1903, when it was described by the Aberdeen Daily Journal as looking more like a gate lodge than a library.
Nurse Paula Hegarty, from County Kerry, moved to Aberdeen in 2005 and tells me she loves even passing by the gothic Fonthill Road institution.
The 51-year-old sighs: “I’m pretty gutted to be honest.
“It’s a place that brings different people together, and it’s needed now more than ever.”
‘It seemed like the perfect place’
Jomy Mathew is looking for jobs on one of the computers, with a Harry Potter book by her side (“it’s my go-to,” she explains).
She was left “heartbroken” when she learned it would soon close, having only recently stumbled upon the community asset on her doorstep.
Jomy says: “When I first came here I was so happy, it seemed like the perfect place.
“It’s been here for more than 100 years so it’s heartbreaking to me that it’s closing, I even told my parents in southern India about it.”
Anita Imabibo, who is doing her Masters degree in public health at Robert Gordon University (RGU), has a two-year-old boy and likes to work at the library as it’s nice and quiet.
She tells me she reads there “almost every day”, with the building being the “safest place” for her to absorb information.
Gordon Burnett, 63, has been coming here for 22 years.
The former Grampian TV worker uses the internet at the library as he doesn’t have it at home.
But that’s not the only connection he’s made at Ferryhill.
Gordon explains: “It’s my life-line… I love the staff, I regard them as my friends.
“I live alone, and coming in to have a blether with them can give you a lift.”
Canadian student’s first visit to Aberdeen library
Taylor Fraser has come from Ontario in Canada to study physiotherapy at RGU.
Needing to get some work done, she decided to take the short walk from her flat to Ferryhill Library rather than venturing through drizzle to the Garthdee campus.
The building can connect to the RGU wi-fi, which makes it handy for many students.
It’s the first time she’s ever been, and she was dismayed to find a flyer on her desk about the closure on Friday, March 31.
“I would definitely have come back here more to work,” she frowns.
I cycle back to the office. It’s raining heavier than before.
Will you miss the libraries or do you agree with the closures? Let us know in our comments section below
So what did I learn during my week working from libraries?
Aberdeen City Council is in a perilous financial state, and nobody can underestimate the task of saving £46.6 million while still managing to keep the basic services we need going.
I spoke to co-leader of the local authority, Ian Yuill, the day after the fatal £280,000 library cuts were agreed.
The Lib Dem councillor justified it by insisting that the library service is much more than mere bricks and mortar…
After all, can’t people just download the Borrowbox app and have what amounts to a library in the palm of their hand?
Rosemary can’t.
She doesn’t want to spend money on a mobile phone because she and her husband’s savings were used up paying for his care during his final years.
For little Arya, Woodside Library is her refuge in a sometimes-cruel world. It can’t be replaced with an app.
Perhaps before deciding to make the cuts council leaders should have taken a leaf out of our book, and spent some time in the buildings they say don’t matter.
Conversation