Libraries...With NO Books?

I am a self-professed Bibliophile ("book lover"), and one of the things I like most about books is holding them in my hands. It's as much the cover design and the smell and the way they look on shelves as it is the information contained within. There may be something a little off about that, but in lieu of recent technological advancements, it may become a thing of the past.

Archiving books online digitally has changed the way we think about books, and about libraries, and a recent article on Boston.com has put a fine point on what the future of libraries might actually be:

This year, after having amassed a collection of more than 20,000 books, officials at the pristine campus [of Cushing Academy] about 90 minutes west of Boston have decided the 144-year-old school no longer needs a traditional library. The academy’s administrators have decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked their sprawling stacks - the classics, novels, poetry, biographies, tomes on every subject from the humanities to the sciences. The future, they believe, is digital.

“When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books,’’ said James Tracy, headmaster of Cushing and chief promoter of the bookless campus. “This isn’t ‘Fahrenheit 451’ [the 1953 Ray Bradbury novel in which books are banned]. We’re not discouraging students from reading. We see this as a natural way to shape emerging trends and optimize technology.’’

I have no illusions that books will go entirely out of style - not in my lifetime - but we are seeing a trend toward the digital, and its implications are huge. It will change the way we read as much as the way books are published, and it may not be too terribly long before the book is, indeed, an outmoded technology, as the headmaster at Cushing suggests.

“When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books,’’ said James Tracy, headmaster of Cushing and chief promoter of the bookless campus. “This isn’t ‘Fahrenheit 451’ [the 1953 Ray Bradbury novel in which books are banned]. We’re not discouraging students from reading. We see this as a natural way to shape emerging trends and optimize technology.’’

[Source: Boston.com

In addition, here is a list of the top 25 E-Book Sites.