Sheffield Central Library: We need more than broken promises from council as building continues to crumble

It is not used as well as it should be. There are generations of children who have grown up in the city and never stepped over the threshold. When I was a teenager it was not only the place to borrow books for free but also where you could get the latest tapes or CDs to keep up with the school trends.

The internet has cut that dead but that doesn't mean we don't need hallowed grounds where youngsters go to learn, listen, read and gaze in awe.

John George Graves donated £30,000 to the city in 1929 for a library on the condition that an art gallery was built on the top floor. His dream was to unite the visual and literary arts into one location - available to all Sheffielders.

Where would we be without those generous benefactors of the past?

Where should we be today when many would argue that those aims are more important than ever in a city where the divide between the haves and haves nots continues to grow at a startling rate.

On a Friday lunchtime, there were just a handful of people in the ground floor library section of this glorious building. The art gallery was busier, although not busy, and the atmosphere was just as I would imagine Graves had envisioned.

My favourite artwork is actually placed right next to Graves himself. Mrs Ruth Julia Drummond-Jackson, Graves' daughter no less in a portrait which captures an expression and character in a way that made me smile almost 100 years later.

I love the explanations, although I am still scratching my head about Dead Sea water - literally a wooden paddle framed in a watertight plastic box.

I was less keen on the sign which kindly explains that blankets are available from members of staff: "During the winter it can get very cold in the Graves Gallery. Unfortunately, the heating no longer works in several of the spaces - the system dates back to the 1930s and, like much of the building, is in need of major refurbishment."

It made me wonder if those who walk the corridors of power in the Town Hall have ever needed to ask for a blanket to keep warm. Perhaps if they had, they might have been more inclined to come up with a plan to save this part of Sheffield history which is screaming through every crumbling wall to be allowed to play its part in a very different future.

Forgive me for repeating myself, but this is a Sheffield problem and it is time the council faced up to that. Other cities have not sat around scratching their heads for three decades, wondering what libraries of the future will look like. Those places now have libraries with basic benefits like entrances that appear open because they aren't cowering behind scaffolding.

The council have promised us a plan - yet another one - and not even a nod towards any actual action. This time they're talking about digital inclusion and accommodation but no longer Chinese hotels at least.

Lisa Firth, council director of parks, leisure and libraries, recently told a meeting: “What we’re trying to do is not look at the library in isolation. We’re also looking at how that connects with the council’s new digital strategy for digital inclusion, but also customer services and the wider accommodation review. We’re making sure that all the links are joined up really in determining what a modern library service and a central library should look like for a city the size of Sheffield while also considering that the Graves building has the city’s art collection as well."

Does that reassure you? No, me neither. Perhaps there are secret negotiations that none of us are party to - but surely they can't have been going on for years?

It breaks my heart that officers at our local authority - with wages paid by us - have chosen not to act, not to fight for national funding and to let this building decay right in front of their eyes over decades.

Us Sheffielders are resilient and we still have a city of generous folk. Right now, Museums Sheffield are benefiting from The Double the Donation, Double the Difference campaign which sees Graham and Sue Royle match all donations made to the museums pound-for-pound. What a heart-warmingly brilliant gesture.

Please pop into Graves next time you're in town, flick through one of the hundreds of fascinating books in the reference library and encourage others to do the same. It is ours and it deserves to be appreciated.