THESE days churches, like motor cars, have to be locked when not in use. Parish halls and community centres are vulnerable to vandals and need to be guarded constantly. But libraries continue to offer one of the few remaining civic spaces in which people feel absolutely safe.

Nobody challenges you when you enter. Young people may use libraries in order to research a school project or, indeed, to do homework in a quiet place, away from the blare of the family television set. Old people drop into them for warmth, company, illumination. And almost all who visit libraries take down a book to scan, even if they do not take the volume home.

None of these activities would feature in a statistician's report on the library system: inevitably, that would be more a matter of coldly quantifying the number of books bought, the number checked out and returned in a given year, and the fraction of the population which borrows books.

Even within its own limits, such a report could scarcely hope to address the quality of the cultural experience: for example, the fact that libraries make available many books which have long gone out of print or volumes of so specialist a character that they would not be carried by most chain store or medium sized bookshops.

Beyond all this, however, are the cultural services which many individual libraries now routinely offer their callers: from community information and databases, to organising poetry readings and art competitions, to special exhibitions of the work of local authors - not to mention the growing holdings of audio and video cassettes available to borrowers.

Libraries provide ideal showcases for visits from established writers and many also offer workshops in which aspiring groups of local artists can sharpen their skills.

Because they are accepted as a neutral social space, they are suitable locations in which to debate matters of public controversy, from Constitutional referendums to topics of more local interest. Just a couple of years ago, when Roddy Doyle's television serial Family came under attack from some residents of Dublin's northside, Ballymun Library was the setting for a spirited debate in which the author gainely answered his critics. The police who turned up, fearful of trouble, soon went away.

These traditions have pretty ancient roots: in the reading rooms promoted by the radical Presbyterians of Belfast in the 1790s and by Thomas Davis and Young Ireland in the 1840s; in the campaigns mounted by figures as diverse as Michael Davitt, Arthur Griffith and Edward Martyn; and, above all, in the public library system which has served the country for so many decades that we are all - politicians as well as public - in danger of taking it for granted.

Although the abolition of rates in 1977 had a regrettable effect on the library system, curtailing many possible developments, librarians nonetheless remain the biggest single group of book purchasers in the State. At present, there are 317 branch libraries providing a service in the Republic, with additional services (including mobile libraries in many cases) available to hospitals, prisons and community groups.

THE Government's Arts Plan 1995-97 contains a proposal that a partnership be developed between the Arts Council and An Chomhairle Leabharlanna, with the aim of increasing public participation in the arts through the library system. A steering committee is now trying to gather information on current levels of activity in the libraries, as a prelude to making positive recommendations on how best to use the libraries in the cultural development of all members of the community.

It will obviously never be possible to have 317 arts centres in the State. The Arts Council believes that it is useful to imagine libraries as an ideal location for such events as storytelling sessions, music recitals, guest lectures. The excellent work done already on an inspirational basis by individual librarians could be assisted by the appointment of a Library Arts Officer. She or he might help to streamline these activities, without increasing the burden on already overworked librarians and without detracting from the primacy of the written word in each library.

The steering committee includes county managers, teachers, arts administrators, librarians and, of course, practising writers: poet Thomas McCarthy and novelist Mary Morrissy. At its first session, Tom McCarthy recalled how a canny local librarian, by placing a Faber book of Thom Gunn's latest poems in his hands when he was no more than 15, sent him on his path to poetry. This was a priceless reminder that the library system is ultimately about individuals: the selection which in any given library is a record of the taste of those who made it. The service is one which "finds the right book for the right person at the right time".

The committee now wishes to take submissions from arts administrators, writers, artists, librarians, interested individuals and community groups anyone at all who has an idea on how to enhance the artistic experience in public libraries.

The opinions of children, on what the public library means (or doesn't mean) to them, are of vital importance in this research: hence An Chomhairle Leabharlanna, in conjunction with The Irish Times, is organising an essay contest on the theme "What the public library means to me". Some of the essayists, along with some of the authors of other submissions, will be invited to outline their points to the committee at a special seminar next year. This may indeed be the first occasion in which children will have been called upon to offer testimony to a public service committee.

At present there is little training given to children in most schools on how to get information in libraries: and there is no Department of Education grant at secondary level towards school library services. The fact that literacy levels in Ireland, among children over 10 years of age, are low in comparison with those of children in other lands may be relevant here.

As yet, many people are scarcely aware of the range of activities promoted by librarians. Dublin City Public Libraries have made headlines in recent years for their administration of the new and prestigious IMPAC Literary Award, won by David Malouf. The reception for the winner, which won much foreign publicity, allowed the librarians to showcase Dublin in Fiction to the wider world in a handsome and informative booklet. But, behind the scenes, they have also been indexing old newspapers and photographic collections, while up front in the ILAC they have been running spoken language classes and schemes for keyboard training.

IN the end, though, it all comes back to the romance of books and to the magic of the word. Many a great writer has had a story to tell of an early, decisive encounter with a library. The French Algerian novelist Albert Camus in The Last Man recalled how the library "multiplied horizons" for the boys of his poor parish: "as soon as they crossed the doorstep, it would take them away from the cramped life of the neighbourhood".

New York author Pete Ham ill has written that in his boyhood the Brooklyn Library drew him every Saturday alike an iron filing to a magnet". It was his second home, to which he went on a mission, "the discovery of the world". It taught him to love beautiful books as objects, for their feel and look and smell but, even better, it led him to empathise with their characters: "I was Jim Hawkins. I was Edmond Dantes. I was D'Artagnan".

Today, there must be a whole new generation of young readers and writers, knowing something of the same excitement - the future McCarthys, Morrissys, Camuses, Hamills. We want to hear from them.