The future is here whether like it or not. So many science fiction books have envisioned a library without books and I could never quite come around to the idea. Well, if you go to Ashburnham in New England, USA you’ll see the results. They’re getting rid of all of their books and replacing them with study centres for laptops as well as a small number of ebook readers.
Is this the future of all libraries? That’s a question I can’t answer but I suspect not. There are so many people who still want books, they want to be able to hold the book and turn the pages. My nephew is looking for an an encyclopedia. He’s quite internet savvy, as teenagers are, and he knows all about Google but he still wants to have a paper edition of an encyclopedia. He wants to be able to hold it and turn the pages.
The article talks about being more able to read deeply and understand more from a book. It also discusses how it’s much easier to browse books and find new authors or new genres by looking at a shelf of books. If digital libraries do come to fruition then I predict it will be much harder for new authors to break into the publishing market as publishers will less happy to try them out.
Please, give me your comments. What do you think of the idea of a digital library? Do you think there’s a future for books in print?