What's a Library Without Books?

In the September 2013 edition of ALA Libraries, the house organ for the American Libraries Association, there was a news article about a library in Texas that is entirely electronic. The head librarian proudly submitted that they would now be able to focus on getting the information people wanted, rather than doing all that pesky re-shelving.

I wonder if someday, maybe in my daughter's children's children's lifetime, books will go back to what they once were -- the special privilege of the rich. As incomes of the 99 percent fall and the super-rich become de facto oligarchs, there may come a time when libraries, the province of the proletariat, will have to go all electronic for what will be termed 'economic efficiency'.  Provided it remains cheaper to provide electronic copies of romance novels and blockbuster best sellers (which libraries are known to provide because they are popular, and the customer is always right), there will be no need to build or to maintain large buildings with deteriorating collections of books requiring expensive staffs to manage them.

Some will tell you that there is so much not published electronically, but if libraries continue to decline along this path, those wanting to preserve and disseminate their information, opinions, and stories will have to adapt to the new paradigm. Publishers will more than likely have to fall in line too or be caught with unsalable inventories.

I don't say this is around the corner. The circumstances I  posited require that trends continue in a straight line and that there is sort of a social equivalent of a black hole where everyone who's anyone gives up on books as too expensive or too inconvenient.

I wouldn't worry about any of this if it weren't for the fact that I'm vulnerable to the same argument.  When I got my tablet computer, I was thrilled to have some of my favorite books on it, some borrowed from the library. I loved the word look up feature and the ability to use the internet to look up obscure reference to help me better appreciate the text. Book aficionados will smugly snicker when I mourn the loss of this device to malfunction. I am relegated to the technologically impoverished substitute for my sleek and shiny tablet: books. I want my e-books back!  I want to have the equivalent of a small public library in the palm of my hand.  I want to be able to be able to look up the obscure epigrams Dorothy Sayers puts in her Lord Peter Wimsey novels with the touch of my finger. Like a modern day Tevye, I wish I could be rich enough to afford to spend the time to look things up in my huge private collection. Alas, I am not, so I muddle along with my collection of old paperbacks and those items I can still check out of my local library. For good or ill, the day I imagined has not come ... yet.