ONE chant that we sometimes hear at Oakwell when the home crowd is silent (which has been quite often, let’s face it, in the season just gone) is: ‘Is this a library?’

This is repeated until something happens and the perceived silence of the library is broken by the sudden awarding of a penalty.

‘Is this a library?’ They sing this, astounded at their own wit and originality.

As a chant, of course, it’s totally outdated. You may as well sing ‘you’re going home on a penny farthing bicycle’ because these days libraries are anything but silent.

They’re places of joyful sounds punctuated by times of, yes, contemplation that hovers on the edge of silence but doesn’t quite get there. Mind you, ‘this is contemplation at the edge of silence’ wouldn’t sit so well on a freeing midweek home game in February.

I’ll be taking my books down to Darfield Library later to change them; for me it’s still a miracle these days when people seem to know the price of everything and the value of nothing that I can borrow a book for free, read it for free and take it back for free.

And of course I love bookshops, too, and I use them all the time but there’s something special about that contract that libraries have with readers: come in and find something you like and take it home and then bring it back and get another. All for nowt.

As we know, libraries aren’t just places that you get books: there are clubs and activities and often all the libraries in the borough are packed with people getting together and breaking the silence alluded to and mocked in that old football chant.

Maybe when I get to Darfield Library the local history society will be there, sifting through the past to make sense of the present and doing the really valuable work of reminding us that all history is local.

Thinking of localism, I’m a big believer in that idea of the 15-minute city, the idea that everything you could possibly want is available to you within a 15-minute bus ride or, in my case, a 15-minute walk and there’s something wonderful about the fact that I can get to the accumulated knowledge that a library contains with a quarter of an hour stroll from my house.

I’m proud of the fact that Barnsley has invested in its branch libraries and that they’re staffed by professional librarians who can help in all kinds of ways.

Last year, Darfield Library celebrated its 60th anniversary and I can still remember when we trooped up from Low Valley School in 1965 to have a first look at the new library.

I was clutching my first library ticket which I’ve still got somewhere in a box in a drawer and that ticket is a passport to all kinds of delights.

That’s why it’s such a good idea that there’s a scheme on across the borough to get every child a library ticket. When I popped into Darfield Library recently a class of children from one of the local schools was going out and the librarians told me that they’d all got their library tickets and that children from other schools who’d got their tickets were coming back and using them, which is great.

It still feels like Darfield Library is nice and new, too, because like a number of libraries in the borough, it’s been refurbished to make it even more welcoming.

Next year we’ll be having another book festival in all the libraries in Barnsley; I remember when we had out first book festival a few year ago it generated a lot of local, national and international publicity and the main thrust of the publicity seemed to be ‘ooh, look – Barnsley’s having a book festival!’

The underlying (and never stated, of course, never stated) assumption being ‘what are these daft flat-cappers going to do with a book? Use it to waft it over their tea to cool it?’

The book festivals have been great successes and they’ll continue to be so.

Okay, I admit it: this column has been a hymn of praise to libraries because I love them so much in the same way that I love theatres and art galleries and fields where sport happens.

Maybe I love libraries best, though, because they have taught me so much over the years about how to be a human being. See you at the library!