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First US Public Library With No Paper Books Opens In Texas
cold fjord writes "Bexar Country in Texas has opened a new $2.3 million library called BiblioTech. It doesn't have physical books, only computers and e-reader tablets. It is the first bookless public library system in the U.S. The library opened in an area without nearby bookstores, and is receiving considerable attention. It has drawn visitors from around the U.S. and overseas that are studying the concept for their own use. It appears that the library will have more than 100,000 visitors by year's end. Going without physical books has been cost effective from an architecture standpoint, since the building doesn't have to support the weight of books and bookshelves. A new, smaller library in a nearby town cost $1 million more than Bexar Country's new library. So far there doesn't appear to be a problem with returning checked out e-readers. A new state law in Texas defines the failure to return library books as theft."
You're confusing medium with content. Physical books are not important in themselves - it's the content within them that's important, and that does not have to be tied to a particular medium. One can be very well-read nowadays without ever laying hands on dead trees.
A library without books is... pointless.
A library which focuses primarily on books is ... almost pointless.
Libraries are there to help improve the general level of education of the nearby population. Storing and lending books were by far the most important functions of libraries when books were the primary source of information in our culture. That is not even close to true anymore. I spend over $200 per month on books at Amazon each month, so I am a heavy reader, but I still consume most information online. And I was a holdout when it came to getting an e-reader, but over half of my book reading is now done on my iPad. In fact the reason I finally bought an iPad last year is because I found myself reading books from my phone far more often than reading paper books, and I wanted a better form factor.
Like it or not, the Internet is a better source of most information now. So libraries need to adapt to that in order to perform their function as education centers. That means more real estate for computers and less for books. With less emphasis on books libraries can also focus on more personal relationships with the community. I go to about five lectures at my local library per year and find them very interesting. I think other services like tutoring and job skill training make a lot of sense in modern libraries as well. I know my local library has many classes each season such as basic accounting, how to appeal your real estate assessment, computer training, etc. These are all far more important than renting out books IMHO.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
A library without books is... pointless.
A library which focuses primarily on books is ... almost pointless.
Libraries are there to help improve the general level of education of the nearby population. Storing and lending books were by far the most important functions of libraries when books were the primary source of information in our culture. That is not even close to true anymore. I spend over $200 per month on books at Amazon each month, so I am a heavy reader, but I still consume most information online. And I was a holdout when it came to getting an e-reader, but over half of my book reading is now done on my iPad. In fact the reason I finally bought an iPad last year is because I found myself reading books from my phone far more often than reading paper books, and I wanted a better form factor.
Like it or not, the Internet is a better source of most information now. So libraries need to adapt to that in order to perform their function as education centers. That means more real estate for computers and less for books. With less emphasis on books libraries can also focus on more personal relationships with the community. I go to about five lectures at my local library per year and find them very interesting. I think other services like tutoring and job skill training make a lot of sense in modern libraries as well. I know my local library has many classes each season such as basic accounting, how to appeal your real estate assessment, computer training, etc. These are all far more important than renting out books IMHO.
The problem with a library full of e-books currently is the licensing, which the 'article' unhelpfully doesn't discuss at all. Libraries buy books and they own them. Or people can donate books and then the library owns them. You don't own an e-book, you license it. Most licenses for ebooks for libraries go on a per-checkout model where the library has to pay for each checkout. Suddenly the library isn't a place where you can buy a book, read it once, donate it to the library, and support them that way.
If the library owns the books, then they have a collection, and that collection is a community asset. If the library has to pay for each checkout, I feel that any donation is just subsidizing poor/cheap people's amazon ebook purchases. You can't donate ebooks to the library so all this money has to come from taxes/cash donations. Ultimately at that point the library is an expensive internet cafe and a place taxpayer money is funneled into Amazon in an inefficient way.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
In short: Artificial Scarcity is economically untenable
Tell that to de Beers.
But I think you're right that infinite supply pushes things to zero price. I also think that writers are going to continue to write, because writers have to write. Poverty is already the norm for writers, and chopping off the very top of the bell curve, i.e. those vanishingly few writers who do manage to pull in mega-bucks, probably won't influence the quality of literature much at all. It might even improve it.
I worry more about journalism. We desperately need to maintain a corps of professional, quality journalists to maintain a functioning democracy. And they have to not only be paid, but have their professional work (foreign correspondents, investigative reporters) properly financed. That's expensive, and advertising support is probably going to be a failing model going forward. Likewise subscriptions. The best television journalism right now is either privately financed (Al Jazeera) or publicly financed (BBC). In the U.S., we're stuck with Anderson Cooper.