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Originally Posted by meeera
I've realised that you've said that, I've just seen no convincing evidence. Libraries, around here at least, remain very busy indeed. Their functions are a lot more than their core functions of lending books and audiobooks. They remain a community hub for meetings, book clubs, writers groups, adult learning, children's vacation activities and storytime, meet-the-author events, genealogy research, game days for seniors, computer training, internet access, homework help, they lend CDs and DVDs. For some community members they're part of their only social contact with other humans (those who use Books on Wheels). Hell, they're even included by our government as an official part of their heatwave emergency response plan, in the absence of community cooling centres, for those who can't afford air conditioning or have lost power. Libraries do all sorts of things, and I can't see any of these things suddenly going away.
They're also slowly adding newer functions like lending ebooks and digital audiobooks, but that's nowhere near taking over from paper books yet. When/if it does, great, whatever, so long as they continue to lend ereaders to people who can't afford them, offer paper books to those for whom that's more appropriate (eg children's board books), and so on. That's what a public library is: a way for we the people to buy books that we can all access, regardless of income. If anything, income inequality is rising, not falling, so I just can't see the obsolescence here.
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Quite so. What you are saying is that libraries are finding new purposes. I don't think the book part will survive.
People who are contemporaries live in different technological eras. I have friends who do not use computers. I have one son who rejects ebooks - but voraciously reads pbooks. So I expect public libraries to linger for a while, servicing such people. But unless the new functions you delineate become new core functions, their days are numbered. The historical core function of being a repository for books to be lent the public is doomed.