IT is good to see that the updated plans for a proposed library and health centre in Little Lever have been revealed.

The current medical centres have been the worse for wear for a long time and the residents — and staff based there — deserve better.

The former Tesco Metro supermarket building in Market Street will be demolished and the library and health centre built on the site. The CGI images accompanying the application look pretty impressive.

What particularly pleases me is that under this plan a library will remain in Little Lever.

I grew up in the village and loved visiting the library, which still stands in Coronation Square and is now 79 years old.

In the 1970s, well before the advent of the internet, mobile phones, tablets and video games of any kind — as well as having access to just three TV channels — books were my favourite thing. Even now, walking into a library or a bookshop takes me back to my youth.

The smell of books — especially new ones — evokes lovely memories of discovering new stories, as well as mithering my mother to buy me a Famous Five or Doctor Who book. A trip to WH Smith in Bolton town centre was always a treat and invariably my mum would give me the 25 or 30p (this was 1974 remember!) to get a book. But as well as buying some books, I used Little Lever library a lot to borrow them.

I vividly remember borrowing the Dr Dolittle series by Hugh Lofting and the wonderfully weird Professor Branestawm stories by Norman Hunter.

I discovered classics like Treasure Island (still one of my favourite stories), The Secret Garden, Alice in Wonderland, Black Beauty, Wind in the Willows and The Borrowers in that library.

Libraries are incredibly important for communities. They give the chance for all children to have access to books and develop a love of the written word, even if their parents can’t afford to buy from bookshops or online.

The value of being introduced to stories and encouraged to use your imagination by learning about different people, periods of history or worlds that don’t exist, at the same time as being entertained, can’t be underestimated.

Literature often sparks creativity in young minds and this is even more important today, as creative industries are a huge growth sector in the UK.

This creativity can be harnessed to write fiction, create a computer game, or design special effects for TV and film. The increase in productions being filmed in this country for both big and small screen means there is a massive demand for creative people.

The other important role that libraries play in our towns is as community hubs.

No definitive decision has yet been made about exactly what role the current library building that I remember from my childhood will have, but let’s hope — as is hinted at in the application — that it can become a community hub, incorporating the war memorial outside. That would be a fitting use for an important part of Little Lever’s fabric.