Rob Blackhurst

My local library in a down-at-heel suburb of East London survived blanket bombing in the Blitz with only minor damage and a fire thirty years ago that saw the destruction of its precious collection of Russian manuscripts. But it faces perhaps a more mortal foe in surviving the era of "accessibility".

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Until last year, the library had the gentle reek of municipal poverty and unfriendliness. The staff who imposed the reverential hush could be sternly disapproving, the carpets were threadbare, the regular clientele were made up of a fair number of those cast adrift – the homeless, the oddball, and the mentally ill – who shuffled in with stuffed carrier bags.

Reading the newspapers could be an intimidating experience when the resident pencil-thin skinhead, who didn't seem to have bathed for years, choose to sit next to you while studying a book about Hitler's last days in the bunker.

But, though faded, the building still seemed like a monument to self-betterment. There were rows of antique writing desks in between the floor-to-ceiling books. Stained glass windows were inscribed with the words "Wisdom and Knowledge" depicting the high priests of civilized culture: Milton, Scott, Shakespeare and Chaucer. And it was a moving sight to see East London's newcomers – once from the Central European shtetls but now from Somalia, Bangladesh and Pakistan – patiently reading English dictionaries, classic fiction, and copies of The Times. East London is, as it has always been, poor. The library provided sanctuary for the kids from crowded high-rise flats who had nowhere else to do their homework assignment in peace, for the unemployed young immigrants scanning the job pages who couldn't afford to buy their own newspaper, and for the Muslims girls who hiding behind books to avoid family chores at home.

With great fanfare, the local council spent £3.5 million on an upgrade. The library's Edwardian shell was preserved, the churchy smell of dust removed, and the dinginess replaced light streaming in through a new steel and glass roof. Funky fluorescents replaced the austere grays and browns. Banks of computers and a large tank of tropical fish replaced bookshelves. To accommodate the new building, a quarter of a million books were consigned to the skip. Meanwhile, celebrity memoirs have been given their own impressive display. Soft sofas "for collaborative work" have replaced posture-improving wooden seats. Where once there was a musty silence there are the giggles and shrieks of teenagers in the "group learning" area. "Sing and Rhyme Time for 0-3s" "Pilates classes" and "Tuesday Tots" are advertised.

But the one ingredient the library lacks is the magical combination of books and silence. The students trying to better themselves now heroically battle against a chorus of texting and testosterone. This isn't just a unique example of local maladministration: everywhere in Britain libraries are downgrading books and transforming the "library experience" in an effort to get more "customers" through the door. In East London libraries have been rebranded as "Ideas Stores" - to sound like that they are a branch of retailing rather than fusty academia.

The county of Gloucestershire now pipe pop music into their libraries, while many in London now allow snacks to be eaten and cell phones to be used in the reading rooms. The Minister in charge of libraries recently criticized them for being "solemn and somber places patrolled by fearsome and formidable staff" instead of "places of joy and chatter".

Of course, libraries do have to grapple with a world of plentiful cheap books and the fact that, until recently, users were on a steady downward path. Now that three paperbacks can be picked up for the price of a cinema ticket, libraries are bound to be lending fewer books to fewer people. But the need for an oasis in a noisy city where those without much can transport themselves from drab surroundings into the kingdom of books is at least as great as it was a hundred years ago.

In the 1890s, in the middle of East London's worst slum, the Whitechapel Library opened its doors- a haven for Jewish escapees from pogroms and from the poverty around them. Three thousand regularly packed into the reading rooms until late into the night. Victorian libraries like these provided, as Charles Dickens put it, " a source of pleasure and improvement in the cottages, the garrets and the cellars of the poorest of our people".

In this darkest of recessionary winters, library use everywhere is rising again, as they provide shelter for unemployed workers from the chill winds of the street and the economy – a place where the jobless spend their days with without being labeled as unemployed. A survey over the last year of users in New York's libraries found that a third were unemployed and looking for jobs. For this they don't need designer furniture, dumbed-down celebrity memoirs, and the latest Blu-ray DVDs. They need a dignified silence - imposed on rich and poor alike - to get on with their search. For them, the forbidding librarian in her tweed jacket and half-moon spectacles is a guardian angel.