A city turns out in force to celebrate doing it by the books

Apologies for that. Even Chic Murray would have eschewed that line. Actually, the great Chic when he lived in Glasgow's west end did once answer a knock at his door, and when the caller asked if Mr Murray was at home, Chic, in his poshest drawl, informed the stranger that "Mr Murray is not at home, but would you care to wait in the library?"

The visitor's face beamed, but as he stepped forward Chic put out a hand and continued: "If you go back downstairs and turn left at the close, you'll find it on the corner of the next street. Big sandstone building. You can't miss it." Then closed the door.

On Saturday, though, everybody was welcome at the Mitchell. If it has been a while since you have been to a Glasgow library, you probably think of the silent buildings of your youth where you tip-toed along the shelves, frightened of disturbing the shimmering silence.

My first visit to the Mitchell was as a teenager, where the vast Reading Hall was my destination to study for my Highers, assuming there would be fewer distractions than staying at home. Which was true.

There were no rows of books in the Reading Hall. You had to flick through a complicated card index, fill out a slip with the number of the book you wanted, and take it to an imposing desk where a member of staff would disappear before returning ages later with the tome.

Nowadays, the Reading Room has been swept away, books are out on display, banks of computers are in constant use by visitors, and there is a Herald Cafe which, confusingly for me, serves a wider variety of food than the actual Herald cafe here in Renfield Street.

Instead of sepulchre silence, the Mitchell on Saturday had the quiet buzz of a busy destination with hundreds of visitors passing through, many there for the Aye Write! book festival, which shows Glaswegians are just as interested in talking about books as they are in reading them.

I pop in to hear Michael Fry, journalist and historian, talk about his book A New Race Of Men: Scotland 1815 To 1914, which has a crowd of well over a 100 in the narrow Jeffrey Room on the second floor.

Michael is a unique specimen in that he is a Tory who believes in Scottish independence. He used to stand for the Tories in Glasgow seats such as Maryhill where, although he never troubled the Labour victor, he returned a higher vote than any other Tory candidate as folk who met him took to his bonhomie.

When my colleague Tom Shields spent a day writing about Michael campaigning in Maryhill it was a frenetic rush of door-knocking while trying to find for Michael somewhere in Maryhill that served a decent claret.

In truth, Michael has the scattergun delivery of a man thinking of 20 different thoughts at once, and trying to squeeze them out, jumping from subject to subject in bewildering oral leaps.

So I am not sure if this is a true reflection, but I think Michael was postulating that there was no decent literature or classical music created in the Scotland of the 19th century, as all the best brains had gone down the road of science, particularly in Glasgow.

The city's university was not simply for an elite, and it was common for shipyard apprentices to study at the university in the evening and go on to become the great industrial millionaires of their age.

A united proletariat was a myth, and that in Glasgow there was a deep split between the skilled workers living respectful lives, going to parks and art galleries, while the non-skilled were given to drink and debauchery.

Or perhaps he argued something completely different as he went off on so many tangents, bringing in Darwinism, the Kirk, philosopher Thomas Carlyle - mad racist apparently - Gaelic, the Scottish novel, and, for some reason, the Scottish Youth Hostel Association.

Bus companies used to run mystery tours where you didn't know your destination. Listening to Michael had a flavour of that, as you never knew where a question was going to take him.

Elsewhere in the building, people were listening to veteran politician Tam Dalyell talking about the books that inspired him, and The Herald's literary editor Rosemary Goring was discussing how historical novels have changed over the years.

So the Mitchell really was the busiest building in Glasgow on Saturday. So how many people would have guessed that correctly if you had asked, 'Where was the busiest building in Glasgow on a Saturday afternoon?' and the answer was a library and not a pub.

My favourite Aye Write! story was the year American author Gary Shteyngart was there, and afterwards was signing copies of his book Super Sad True Love Story.

A fan put in front of him a book already encased in a plastic cover. Perhaps Gary thought it was a fan who just took good care of his books, but a Mitchell staff member knew better - only in Glasgow surely would someone ask an author to sign a library book.