A Library Worker in Notts

illustration: Emmy Lupin

Libraries. They’re just for people who want to sit in silence and read books, right? Wrong. They offer a whole lot more than that, as we find out from our Library Worker in Notts words: Lizzy O’Riordan illustration: Aamina Mahmood

I’m not a librarian myself, but I work with a lot of librarians. I’m a Libraries and Culture Officer. I’d studied my degree in Journalism with Literature, so I was always interested in writing, and I’ve always loved books. In my role at the minute, I focus a lot on the adult reading side of things, so I get to work with writers all the time, and it’s all about getting people into reading - it’s perfect for me.

I don’t like to tell people what they should be reading, but one of my favourite books right now is Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart. It’s not an easy read, but the main character is just fantastically drawn. It’s a heartbreaking story, but it’s one of those books that really connects you to a character; you feel like you know them, and you almost miss them when the book ends. Another book I really, really love, just for how different it is, is Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. It’s set in a cemetery where Abraham Lincoln mourns for his son, and let’s just say there are a few ghosts there! It’s really creatively written, and I couldn’t stop talking about it afterwards.

Working for libraries is very different from what people expect. In fact, that was one of my aims when I first came into this job: to start changing perceptions of libraries and the people involved in them. There’s not really a typical day. We plan loads of events, we do a whole range of projects.

At the minute, I’m starting to plan for our poetry festival later in the year. This involves looking at different poets, seeing who would be a good fit for our libraries. Last week, I was in Birmingham presenting at an Innovation Gathering event for libraries, where I talked about a big Arts Council-funded project we’re doing called I Am A Reader, which is all about celebrating and exploring the creativity of reading and readers. It’s really nice to be able to go out and share that with other people across the libraries sector.

I Am A Reader has its own physical touring exhibition in libraries, which is beautiful. It’s 22 illustrations done by a very talented artist, Carol Adlam, using real comments from real readers. It’s super inspiring.

What I enjoy most about the job is the variety and the people. We’ve got creatives working on visual arts programmes, family theatre, film screenings, and we all try to work together to make sure everything is linked. We’re doing a screening of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, for example, and that will link to our work around the book. It’s really nice when everything goes together.

It’s amazing working with the public and seeing the response you get to what we’re doing, too. Some people say things like, ‘I didn’t really think of myself as creative before, but now I realise that I am!’ That’s huge, seeing that you’ve helped people to realise new things about themselves.

The biggest challenge - but an enjoyable challenge - is fitting all of these pieces together, working with our communications team to make sure all our events are publicised, keeping in touch with our libraries to make sure everything runs smoothly. It can be very busy, there are a lot of deadlines to keep to - but that keeps the pace going!

Throughout my career, I’ve got to see the programme of our libraries’ cultural offerings really grow, and to see people’s perceptions of libraries really change. One of my first projects was with the new Worksop Library, which is this big, beautiful space. It’s been really rewarding to introduce everything from theatre shows to activity workshops there.

All of this emphasises and expands the value of libraries as a welcoming, accessible face of culture. Using family theatre as an example, people might come into libraries thinking theatre isn’t for them, but they feel safe in the library, and they give it a go. It helps so many people to take their first steps into something new.

We always try to steer clear of being about ‘just books’. Of course, they’re the core of what we do, and we’re proud of that. But we’re about books and more. I think it’s a bit outdated now, that idea of libraries being a place where you’ll be shushed and it’s all about being quiet. Obviously, they do still offer those quiet spaces, but they also deliver these great, lively events. They are truly places for everyone.

If I could change anything about my job, it would just be to have more time. Can we get someone to invent more time? We’re really good at what we deliver, but I just wish we could do more of it. It’s so beneficial to so many people, so there would always be an appetite for more.

Cast your mind back to the early 1970s and you might remember the opening of a certain radical bookshop just outside of Nottingham city centre. Named Mushroom, in reference to the Jefferson Airplane song White Rabbit, it was a staple to the city’s anarchists up until its closure in 2000. But what made it so significant? And why do so many people still have fond memories to this day? We catch up with co-founder Chris Cook Cann, alongside former worker Ross Bradshaw, to learn more about the Mushroom’s history, including the times they were raided by a group of fifty fascists and had stock confiscated by the police…

It’s 1972. Swedish supergroup ABBA have just formed, the novel Watership Down has recently been published, and you find yourself flicking through a stack of paperbacks in Nottingham’s newly opened Mushroom Bookshop. Located on 261 Arkwright Street, couple Chris Cook Cann and Keith Leonard have rented the building off of the City Council for £5 a week and taken residence above the shop. Previously operating as a jeweller, it’s the tail end of the Vietnam War overseas (which will be over in 1975), and this is Nottingham’s first ever anti-war bookstore.

Created with the intention of “love and peace”, Chris tells me as I sit in her living room, surrounded by bookshelves, “we thought we could create an alternative society if we ignored the mainstream and did enough of our own thing. We picked Nottingham because somebody I knew from university said it had cheap property and lots of students. So we hitchhiked up and I have lived here ever since.

“Perhaps we were naive, but there was hope,” Chris continues. “There were plenty of other bookshops in those days that gave us advice, like Compendium in London and Orwell in Ipswich.”

Describing an atmosphere of change, Chris remembers meeting other radical bookshop owners and being inspired by the exchanging of ideas. So, despite the fact that, as Chris writes in her memoir Face Blind, “it would be a considerable time before we could make a living at this,” and, “I babysat and cleaned houses, although I hated it,” the couple carried on with the bookshop as a passion project, printing leaflets and distributing them across the city for customers.

An important decade, the Mushroom couldn’t have opened at a better time, with a rising sense of discontent at the establishment brewing - manifesting in anti-war protests in the US and the ‘Decade of Strikes’ as it was dubbed in the UK, in which postal workers, miners and dustmen are among the first to demand better conditions. A time slap bang between the Aldermaston anti-nuclear marches of the 1960s and the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp of the 1980s, there’s a feeling of change, crisis and public action. And, as usual, Nottingham, with its rebellious reputation, finds itself in the middle of things - with a radical bookstore where anarchists share ideas.

But what did they actually stock? Well, obviously books, which lived in the front of the store, alongside “joss sticks, clothes, crafts and other paraphernalia in the back”, according to local literary historian John Baird. All of which had a special focus on anti-war, anti-nuke and anarchist sentiments. A member of the Federation of Alternative Booksellers, the titles ranged from books on vegetarianism, gay writing, drugs and feminism, all the way to banned books, including the illegal autobiography Spycatcher, written by former M15 officer Peter Wright, alongside Salman Rushdie's notorious novel The Satanic Verses

Operating in a time before the internet, Chris describes it as a place where customers could buy books (of course), but also pass on information, saying that “people would come in with a pile of their leaflets and put them on a big noticeboard. And we knew who was interested in what based on what they were buying, so we would recommend groups to our customers,” making the shop a natural hotspot for radicals to meet - as well as a natural target for those who didn’t agree with leftist philosophies.

Moving to Heathcoat Street in the mid-seventies, it was in this more central location that some of the more striking events occurred, as described by ex-worker (and current owner of Five Leaves Bookshop) Ross Bradshaw in the Radical Bookselling History Newsletter. “Most of my seventeen years at Nottingham’s Mushroom were spent unpacking parcels, serving customers, seeing trade reps… from time to time things got a bit more dramatic,” he comments. This was largely due to the controversial books sold, and Bradshaw recalls having “another batch of death threats to add to the file” after the shop stocked The Satanic Verses. Plus a run-in with the police, in which they confiscated the shop's entire drug literature section under the Obscene Publications Act - only to later give the books back when Mushroom contested the charge.

Though it wasn’t until January 1994, by which time Mushroom had been running for 22 years, that the most noteworthy protest against the shop occurred, in which “fifty fascists attacked” the store after travelling to Nottingham to see white supremacist band Skrewdriver. Then, once at the Mushroom, they smashed up the shop monitors, broke glass and threw over the bookshelves, as the staff quickly tried to escort customers from the building. During this time, Ross was “beaten, but not badly” while trying to hold the door against the perpetrators - the whole event resulting in some minor injuries and 32 of the attackers being arrested, many of whom tried to escape by jumping on the bus to Derby.

After this, the Mushroom Bookshop lived on in relative peace, with Ross leaving in 1995, and it remained open until 2000, at which time it had to shut due to financial struggles. Even now, though, its impact can still be felt in the city, with many folk from that era remembering it as a place where they discovered new ideas for the first time and got involved in political action. And, of course, it acted as inspiration for the current radical bookshop in Nottingham, Five Leaves, which looks back on Mushroom as an ancestor. So, when I ask Chris if the bookshop made a difference and she replies “I would like to hope so”, I feel confident in saying that it definitely did.