Soon most if not all libraries will be facing quandaries similar to that of the NYPL, owing to the devices on which more and more people are doing more and more of their reading. Already at least a fifth of all book sales come from e-books, and the numbers are rising fast. Total e-book sales in January 2012 came in close to twice those of a year previously, and were more than ten times the figure for January 2009. The Pew Internet and American Life Project reports that 21 percent of all Americans have read an e-book in the past year, with the proportion predictably higher among the young. Nearly all of the most popular English-language titles are downloadable, including millions of free books in the public domain, mostly digitized by Google Books. Amazon and Barnes & Noble sell hundreds of thousands of copyrighted titles for a price similar to or lower than that of the equivalent paperback. When the Harry Potter novels finally appeared in electronic versions this spring, they racked up $1.5 million in sales in just three days. This technology cannot simply substitute for the great libraries of the present. After all, libraries are not just repositories of books. They are communities, sources of expertise, and homes to lovingly compiled collections that amount to far more than the sum of their individual printed parts. Their physical spaces, especially in grand temples of learning like the NYPL, subtly influence the way that reading and writing takes place in them. And yet it is foolish to think that libraries can remain the same with the new technology on the scene.
(via thelifeguardlibrarian)
