The importance of libraries

JOSÉ Rizal envisioned a nation that would be redeemed and would achieve real freedom mainly through education. Books played a large part in the development of his ideas and his personality, and he noticed a huge mental gap between people who had access to books and people who did not. The curiosity for learning new things and the acquisition of critical thinking skills usually came along with it.

The first time I went to the public library of my city, I was 15. I was amazed by the fact that you could take up to three books with the help of a registered ID card. At that time my reading habits were quite poor because I was thinking more often about playing football than about lying down in bed with a book, but the expectations that a few thousand books could potentially bring to my life seemed to me endless.