[loviedovie]

Let me clarify my position.

I am not talking about the benefits of OD or how awesome it is. I am talking about the long term effects on the way the local libraries operate.

Now maybe you do not give a damn flying bird poop about this issue. However I am claiming that in 20 years you wont be able to borrow paper books or ebooks that are owned by the library from your local libs. Probably you still will be able to borrow paper books, but with special permission, and not to take out of to the library. And all the ebooks and the digital contents that your local lib will provide you will come through OD. OD will decide and filter while maybe keeping an eye on the market needs.


Come back to this topic 20 years later and write what you think about the state of the local libraries then. I am saying that as long as most people think that this is the libraries should operate, like letting a corporation run the backend and the frontend of our libraries, we wont have free and fair libraries in the future. Probably the number of physical libraries will diminish and those who can stand against the sands of time will mostly be culture centers. Again you do not need physical hospitable buildings to provide digital lending library services. For instance Gutenberg.org and Archive.org does not have cafes or buildings to hang around.


Anyway the issue I am raising here has nothing to do with paper books whatsoever. I am talking about one corporation dominating our libraries. Paperbooks will be here for a while, that is not the main issue. OD providing lending library or not does not make a difference on the fate of paper books. That is just the way techology replacing another tachnology. That should not be the part of the discussion here.