In my eight years working in libraries across the country, I have known librarians trudge nearly ten miles through the snow because the roads were closed rather than leave library visitors stranded in the cold.

I have seen library staff cancel their plans to meet a friend or get a haircut in order to cover their sick colleagues and ensure that it is business as usual at the library. And I have kept my family waiting at home, with my dinner going cold, to detour from my evening commute to the doorstep of a lady who said, “without my books I am just sitting around waiting to die”. For many people in the communities we serve, the library service is a lifeline.

That is why we who work in the libraries are so passionate about providing the best, most accessible service we can. Yet there will be people this Christmas for whom the local library doors will be closed. And there will be isolated individuals sitting at home longing for a mobile library or home library visit that will never come.

The sad truth is that in the last seven years Britain’s public libraries have been hard hit by austerity cuts and this has very real consequences for all of us, but most especially the country’s most vulnerable residents.

Official figures from the Office of National Statistics suggest that one older person dies every seven minutes from cold in England and Wales. Loneliness is a bigger killer than smoking or obesity. And it is estimated that 12.6 million adults in the UK don’t have the basic digital skills they need to benefit from the online world.

Yet in the face of all these desperate needs, more than 400 public libraries and a further 140-plus mobile libraries have been shut down. We have visitors who cross our threshold just for a warm place to sit and the chance to see a friendly face. We provide spaces, alive with activities for recreation or learning.

We empower people with the skills to realise their dreams of starting their own business or send an email to a loved one on the other side of the world. And all of this we provide free at the point of access, to anyone. Libraries are arguably the most socially democratic place in the modern world.

Demand for public libraries is as high as it has ever been and, if anything, the need for them is even greater. The statistics that get passed around about falling numbers of library visitors are books being borrowed belie the truth, as they do not acknowledge how many fewer libraries there are, nor how drastically reduced the remaining library services’ resources have become.

Despite everything, libraries have never been a more exciting place to work. Librarians across the country are pulling together to make positive changes out of challenges, to bring about new and innovative ways of working that maximise what we can offer with limited resources.

When my own sizable library lost all but two of its paid members of staff, we recruited 30 volunteers to help out. The volunteers generously gave up their time to support the library, they became the smiling face at the entrance brightening up the library visitor’s day and libraries became, for some of them, the highlight of their week.

My volunteer recruits included a widow who had begun to find the loneliness unbearable, a teenager whose experiences in the library helped her to overcome her anxiety disorder, someone who had dropped out of the working world due to a nervous breakdown but whom after six months of volunteering was looking into pursuing a professional librarianship qualification, and a women who had lost three close family members one year and was trying to pull herself back together.

So it was that I discovered that my new team was the past, present and future of library services, and while more resources would mean more benefits for library users, we are determined to keep fighting the good fight.

When a library is closed, people are wounded by that loss. There is no substitute for a real library service being delivered by trained professionals with expertise in areas as diverse as child development, digital literacy, event programming and social inclusion.

Christmas is a time for family and community and for sharing love and wellbeing. For many people, their local library is the place where they come to fill those gaps in their life. Take that away and you really are leaving people out in the cold.

This series aims to give a voice to the staff behind the public services that are hit by mounting cuts and rising demand, and so often denigrated by the press, politicians and public. If you would like to write an article for the series, contact kirstie.brewer@theguardian.com

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