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Physical libraries aren't going anywhere yet, even if many people only use them as a kind of public Netflix queue (you can reserve books online at the Seattle Library Site). We're still a long way from a paper- and DVD-less society, and even if the Internet has "volumes of reading material I could freely download," there still isn't much of the well-edited, well-written material that's in books. Yes, yes, there's lots of good stuff on the Internet and lots of bad stuff in books, but I've not found any free, legal site featuring modern fiction that I would actually want to read, for example. To be sure, some books have been obviated by the Internet, which I discuss in the context of Tim Harford's The Logic of Life , in contrast to Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational .

But the Internet isn't there yet; both books I mention have blogs and websites associated with them, complementing the physical book, just as libraries have computers to complement their book selection.

I used to have a couple thousand books. One day when I realized I need more shelving the burden of the hoard finally started to weigh on me. I decided to go through the collection and sort it into two piles: the books I will likely read again and the books I will not likely read again. I ended up keeping a couple hundred books and donating the rest to the local library.

Now whenever I want to read a book I first search my local library listings, check it out and it gets delivered to my local branch. It's really easy.

I can see an interesting side effect coming up if NYT decides to do this, especially at the cost figure they're proposing.

Specifically, I could see a move like this being a shot in the arm for public libraries, especially if it sparks other newspapers and news agencies to do it.

Consider: You could either pay the fee and access the thing from your home system, or you can exert a little effort and hit up your local public library. Access to the same material would (likely) be at no extra cost to you. Heck, you wouldn't even have to pay for gas if you took public transit.

Even if, for some reason, you still need Internet access, many libraries have free wireless. The Seattle main (downtown) library, as one example, has both wired and wireless Internet access available at no charge to its patrons (note that VPN only works if you use Cisco LEAP or Microsplatt's PPTP).

Keep the peace(es).

The MS millionaires are making Seattle an interesting-looking place. In addition to the Gehry-designed rock museum, they just opened a very cool new public library.

I'd say there's a definite revival on the west coast. In San Francisco the new main library was a huge success and up in Seattle the new main library is being opened in less than a month. It's a really interesting architectural design as well.

Can't wait to hang out in the new library!

I doubt it. Someone still has to understand the standards, how it all fits together. Your library catalog might have a slick user interface, but there's a lot more to library science than just the dewey decimal system. (If you don't believe me, knock yourself out reading MARC standards, for starters). Librarians will do more and more with technology, but somebody needs to understand at a deep level how the technology maps to the underlying standards and practices, and if AI has taught us anything, it's that it's a lot harder to encode human expertise than you might think. Knowing how to (re)search is far from a trivial skill, and knowing how to assign meaning or metadata to data is something I think computers will never be able to do as well as humans.