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There are various scanning activities going on right now (Google partnering with Stanford, Harvard, Oxford, Yahoo/MS doing similar, the French sponsoring a non-English scanning initiative etc) aimed at offering out of copyright material electronically - you probably will be able to get the historical books electronically.
I don't think the intention of this thread was to suggest that books would be destroyed (it doesn't follow that offering them electronically means they will be destroyed) and the disappearance of public library buildings doesn't mean books won't be stored, it means the public won't have such free access to the physical artifact (for instance in the UK - there may be regional storage repositories, but public access only available say at the British library or a few region libraries rather than in every town and at every University).
I agree rlauzon that people won't pay even $100 for a reader ... however if access is via a home PC, through a public reading room (as opposed to library) PC - or a PC in say Borders ... this is by far the most likely scenario in the short term rather than a dedicated reader ....
The library as a repository I agree has a long future - the library as a place we actually go in 20 years time?
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