There’s a place near you where problems are solved. You can even borrow a book

5 hours ago 3

Opinion

December 25, 2025 — 6.00am

All my life, visits to the library were relatively transactional. I picked out books as a kid then, later, CDs as teenager and took them home to obsess over for a finite period. I returned them and started the process over again. Until one day, I stopped.

As a freelancer, I’ve tended in recent years to think of the library as a place I can take my laptop and do what I do at home, just with air-conditioning and more people around to psyche myself into productivity.

I knew there was more to it, I just never really found myself in need of all I could find and do at the library. I suppose that might be a sign of luck or privilege; the “more” available at libraries comprises a range of support. Help navigating complex technology or forms in a language you don’t speak. Face time with a helpful social worker. All manner of problems are solved in our city libraries.

I don’t always open the email newsletters from Yarra Libraries, but when they sent one with the subject line “Stay cool & get creative” on December 1 – the first day of summer, on paper, and one of the many unseasonable cool days we’ve had in Melbourne – I had a little laugh as I scrolled. It described the importance of air-conditioned spaces “for older adults, children, those with poor insulation and for people who don’t have a place to call home” and mentioned some facilities will stay open later “to offer the community a safe place to stay”. This was more than just a place to sit and do emails.

Among the events it described were a screening of an Arabic-language film, a class on digitising photos, a session where new English-speakers can practice their skills and bookish events for writers and readers. In the middle of the list was news of a sewing club. With the growing pile of items I needed to mend – and had been unable to, after selling my bulky old sewing machine while moving house – I signed up and blocked out time on a Monday morning.

The librarian greeted me when I arrived and explained she was covering for the usual sewing club host, who was sick. “It’s my first time here, so you’re all I know!” I assured her.

I was the only newbie; the three other sewers were regulars. They took part in classes to make their own tote bags, came eager to pick up new skills, and collected family members’ mending to have something to do when they arrived. Any assumption I had of dropping into the chair at a machine to complete my tasks and head home were put to bed immediately.

The regulars all knew each other and were keen to get to know me too. I didn’t have a moment to feel like an interloper; they immediately made me feel welcome.

For all her claims of being a substitute, the librarian was clever and skilled. She took apart the back of a machine with a screwdriver to find – and fix – whatever had stopped it from working smoothly. After hearing about a tricky mending task I had to do – one that had to sit on top of a visible area of a skirt, and couldn’t be neatly hidden – she set up a projector screen at the front of the room to show us the library’s books on the Japanese mending technique called sashiko.

“We can’t teach you to do this, but we have the books that can,” she told us.

As I ducked out to get a drink, I saw librarians helping families fill out tricky bureaucratic paperwork and pull reference books for research. The “book out / book in” view I had of these places had been all wrong for so long.

The next night, over dinner with a friend, I mentioned a screening of an old movie a cinema had coming up. “But you could just watch it at home,” he said. I also could have reattached those buttons at home. I can sit and do my writing at home. With every convenience in our homes and phones, it takes effort to get out and do it elsewhere. But it can be worth it, especially when the doors to doing it are open to all of us.

When I got off my bum and headed to the library, I intended to mend a zipper and patch some worn spots. What I found was a new community.