| I feel like this is a common sentiment shared among those that started their life with physical books being the only way to read a book (and I count myself among those). As years have passed, I found physical books are great for gifting, but terrible to keep. I never read any given book more than once, twice at most. Having those books be occupying space in my home, having to be managed across moves, and then just forgotten, perhaps only to be remembered with some nostalgia when you linger your gaze idly on them from time to time...I find that wasteful. I've been very happy reading from an ebook device for almost two decades now. I don't think the tactile sensation of a book to be that great anyway. It's much more convenient, and, above all, I don't have the burden of having to manage all that space. The same way that I was burdened by my father's passing and having to manage his books and comics (of course, this was only a minor annoyance, but not something I would have ever wished to do, because of course...I couldn't bring myself to just throw it all out to the recycling boxes, and gifting them all to some place is no that easy now that almost no one is taking in physical books anymore). All of that...for an ephemeral experience. A passing distraction. Much like a movie. Now...how does this relates to the library disappearing? I think libraries as they're designed don't provide that much value when you can get almost all what you want in a single kindle. Indeed, physical books make no sense to me, specially having to store them in a public building, whose space could be put to better use for the community. The concept of accessing the literature freely should never disappear, I'm not advocating for that. But I would prefer that this would be done by lending or allowing the use of e-books rather than physical books. Or even just pdf files to be read with the user's own devices. Perhaps a self-deleting pdf if some kind of lending wants to be implemented? Instead, the physical space currently occupied by books could be used to promote communal activities, between kids and between adults. There are public buildings like that in Barcelona, that can be used by cultural neighborhood associations that allow the people of the city to bond in much the same way that ancient communal places like the church would have performed. So, for example, food distribution citizen cooperatives, or role playing/board game groups, singing and dancing groups, theater play associations or courses, historical recreation societies...the sky's the limit! All of the previous activities provide more integration and community than what a traditional library could ever provide. Reading being mostly a personal experience, even taking into account potential reading clubs. And what I've come to believe is that it is much more important to enabling opportunities and social integration, to provide shared spaces rather than trying to cover that need by giving free access to self-learning or leisure resources. I would prefer my public money to be used towards communal integration, rather than reinforcing the solitude crisis that we're all drifting to. |
What you're describing is the function of many public libraries in the United States, especially in the last 30 years. At least, one of the major functions: a place to meet, a place to study, a place to take classes, a place to get resources about social services, a place to sit inside when it's raining and you don't have a home to go to.
When I said that switching to a digital model would eventually diminish the role of libraries, I was thinking about this exactly. The literal loss of a shared community resource. But I am also noting that there are almost certainly knock-on effects of having such a place that we don't fully understand, and would not understand until years after we'd lost it.
I am thinking, abstractly, about the consequences of over-indexing on a particular metric, at the cost of everything else. Especially everything else which was not known or considered in the original problem statement. If our metric is "access to information", we could maximize that by getting rid of books and focusing exclusively on digital lending, and we could call it a success. What I'm saying is: have we accounted for everything that would happen if we actually did that?
As a species, we're pretty bad at guessing these things. We thought the internet would make us more civilized, we thought social media would bring us together, etc., etc.
This starts to sound like a Chesterton's Fence argument, and I was trying to avoid that, but there's no denying it now. That's basically what I'm saying I guess!