Photo/Illutration An online petition calling for improved working conditions of librarians gathered support from more than 70,000 people. (Captured from the Change.org website)

As an almost daily user of libraries, I find it so inconvenient that they are being closed over the year-end and New Year holidays.

Come to think of it, I owe so much to libraries, from the time I was a child in love of picture books to today, when I often turn to libraries in my desperate searches for literature and other materials.

Stuck in my writing, I find myself wandering helplessly, day after day, between whatever bookshelves I have access to.

Librarians have worked painstakingly to provide the precise documents and materials that I need. My humble online search skills would never allow me to track such information down.

In “O-Sagashi no Hon wa” (The book you are looking for), a work of fiction by author Yoshinobu Kadoi, the main character, a librarian, makes the case: “A library has a reference counter, which is staffed by humans. ... Living humans, with flesh and blood.”

However, librarians, who have highly specialized skills, are struggling these days to make a living. They are working as non-regular employees because local governments are cutting down on regular jobs to reduce costs.

A news article about a librarian earning only 98,000 yen ($730) a month in take-home pay led me to wonder if the kind-hearted librarian I know is also struggling to make ends meet.

I was also taken aback by the way the central government meddled in the selection of books for libraries when it called on public and school libraries earlier this year to “expand the stock of books on the issue of abductions” of Japanese nationals by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s.

I share the views of Kadoi, who said, “The public will have broader leeway for thinking on their own when (books on) an impartial variety of subjects and thoughts are made available to them.”

I shudder to imagine where intervention by the state could end up.

In Russia, which recently enacted a law to ban “propaganda on homosexuality,” libraries have reportedly received a list of books for removal, including a work by Haruki Murakami. Russia has also destroyed a number of libraries during its invasion of Ukraine.

I once visited the British Museum Reading Room, which Karl Marx (1818-1883) frequented for 30 years, and saw his favorite seat “G7,” where he wrote “Das Kapital” and other works.

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” It sounds so ironic today, when librarians are suffering, that Marx spun out that famous quote in a library.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 28

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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