The most borrowed service in the city's library system this year is not a book, a film or an e-reader. It is a person: an hour of someone's undivided expert attention, booked like any other loan and returned, in a sense, at the end of the hour.
The neighbourhood branch that started the scheme calls it the human library. Its catalogue lists not titles but people — a retired engineer, a midwife, a former refugee, a tax accountant — each available to be “borrowed” for a conversation. The demand has been so far beyond expectation that other branches are scrambling to build their own collections.
The librarians are careful not to over-explain what they have stumbled onto. But the outline is clear enough. In a city with no shortage of information and a deepening shortage of attention, the scarce thing worth lending turned out not to be knowledge. It was time, given generously, by one person to another, for an hour, on the record, with nothing else demanding it.
