Just as a data point; I went to graduate school from 2002-2004, and even then, I didn’t have to actually GO to the library and look at paper anything. All the periodicals were online, indexed, and were actually faster to get than having to go futz around in the stacks looking for some particular volume of a particular journal, and then having to find the specific article in it.
I think there is a real place these days for paper books for one specific audience- young children’s books. It’s not reckoned to be good for children to fiddle around on tablets too much, so e-books aren’t recommended. And kid books are quick to read, so you need a lot of them, and there are a lot of levels of reading materials- board books, all the way up to young adult novels, and the corresponding “reference” books- anything from books with about a dozen words about farm animals, up through kid science encyclopedias.
All of that should be available at the public library for parents and children who either don’t have the means, or who choose not to buy all that reading material themselves.
Now for grownups, I think that economies of scale make e-books a much better deal- they can auto-revoke them, they can work a multiple-book license without actually having to deal with 27 physical copies, they never deteriorate, and so on.
there’s another aspect to this issue: politics.
In a city library, the staff on the floor are professional librarians, but the management are professional politicians from city hall.
The politicians set the budget, and have total control from the top. And they also have different goals.
Librarians want to help people read, and stock books.
Politicians want to help people use a city facility, ( and say ‘thank you’ on election day.)
So the managers,not unreasonably, want to see a steady stream of people using the facility.
They don’t care whether those people are reading books, or dropping their kids off for babysitting in the new playroom, or buying lunch in the new coffee shop inside, or attending a yoga workshop.They just want to keep the head count high.
So libraries are becoming community centers.
Because that’s what keeps the numbers up, and lets the politicians feel satisfied that the city budget is going to good use.
I don’t know why this didnt happen 30 years ago. I suspect that it was just tradition. Everybody “knew” that libraries were only for books, so nobody tried to change it.
But when the internet forced some major changes in the book-business, it made it easy to change the whole business model, and convert the library to a community center
The only real change in our local branch library over the past 17 years has been elimination of fines for overdue books, and automatic renewal (with e-mail notification).
From what I’ve seen, given a choice between a physical object and an iPhone, most kids will gravitate to the iPhone. I’m not sure that contradicts what you are saying since much of your post is devoted to what’s good for children rather than what they would want. It’s just that your lead-in was that kids like physical objects, with the implication that they like electronic devices less.
So, yeah it may be important to thwart their natural tendencies and force them to interact with real objects instead of virtual objects in those very early years.
My sons High School library, well it should even be called that anymore. Yes, there are a FEW books on some racks and off to the side. But the majority is just big open space with tables for kids to study or to use as a meeting room.
Which you know, makes sense. Back in my day few kids actually read the books in the library. It was used as study hall mostly. Most of the books ended up vandalized.
How does that art book look on your Kindle? That over-sized children’s book?
And what about the families for whom a Kindle would be unaffordable?
I’m not sure about the lending terms for e-books, but real books don’t have terms.
My library has e-books, but only a fraction of what they have in the way of real books, and very few e-books are more than 10 years old.
Then there is the serendipity of finding an interesting book on the shelf. You may kind of get this on Amazon, but not in any library catalog I’ve seen. I taught a few sessions of second grade science last year, and in June I asked the class to go the the science section of the Children’s room in the library and take out a few books that interested them. How could I do that if only e-books were available?
I think you are right, which is why my daughter strictly limits my granson’s screen time and does not limit his real book reading time. And he (2 1/2) loves real books, and goes to bed with them. And if wants 10 in bed, and you try to give him 5, he;ll let you know.
In the Times last Sunday Neil Gaiman wrote how when he was very young hiss parents dropped him off at his library during school holidays. He read his way through the entire children’s section. (He admits thiat his parents shouldn’t have.) So, nothing new. 30 years ago there werre plenty of community activities at the Princeton Public Library, so nothing new there wither.
Children actually like (and need) tactile interaction; the act of handling a book, turing the pages, looking at the static pictures for detail, et cetera are all important aspects of cognitive development that children will naturally do if not distracted. Electronic screens like a phone or table are appealing because of the constant motion and quick interaction, but they do a lot to retard learning development and native curiosity by overstimulating and discouraging the sort of repetitive exposure a child gets with a favored book. It’s kind of like cats and laser pointers; they’re instantly drawn to the moving light dot on the floor to the near exclusion of everything else, but they get more satsifying play out of an actual toy they can capture and ‘kill’, then carry around like a trophy (or hide under your pillow).
It is interesting that many of the execs of social media companies take great pains to limit their childrens’ exposure to electronic devices and social media because they know through their internal research how disruptive these devices can be to normal cognitive funcitoning even for adults who grew up without them, which should be frightening to everyone else. I’m coming to the opinion that early overuse of electronic devices may do as much cognitive harm as tetraethyl lead in gasoline which we may not be able to confirm for decades.
At any rate, if you remove electronic distractions, most children will gravitate toward books if they see adults or other children reading them, and part of the ritual of pre-literate storytime is the turning of pages, pointing out details in the pictures, and handling of the book; it is as much a sociofamilial exercise as it is one in developing literacy, which just does not really occur with an electronic device and ebooks. It isn’t just an appeal to the old way of doing things but the fact that while books and reading are kind of artificial sociotechnological constructs, electronic screens are entirely artificial, providing a kind of stimulation that does not occur at all in nature and that appears to be highly disruptive to sleeping habits and attential focus.
Our county has more than a million residents, and many library branches, but hardly any books. The buildings are huge, full of empty floor space and tables and chairs where people hang out. They’ve been aggressively culling books for years. If the book isn’t borrowed for three years, out it goes, even if it’s one of the less popular works by a great author.
You can’t go browse or do research in the library anymore. I end up browsing online and trying to get books put on hold or through inter-library loan programs. Ebook hold queues take several months.
I have noticed this as well. It’s not as drastic in these parts, but my neighborhood library probably has 60% of the books it used to have. Even my University library has cleared off whole floors for study and common areas at the expense of shelving. They still own the books, but they’re stored off-site and can be retrieved on demand.
Libraries serve different needs now. The only constant is change.
Given what an overall shitty parent Steve Jobs was, I don’t know that just because he did something makes it necessarily a good example, but there is also a lot of speculation and some data from the developmental neuroscience community that exposure to and stimulation by electronic display devices produces significant and possibly detrimental changes compared to normal (non-stimulated) development:
If you want more detailed information PubMed is a good resource (firewalled but free registration; not sure about accessibility outside the United States) and there are some studies but they are naturally preliminary since the wide availability of interactive electronic screens only started about a decade ago with the commercial smartphone and table revolutions, so a lot of the existing research focuses on televisions which are somewhat different in terms of interaction and stimulation potential. As I said, I don’t think we can really appreciate the full extent to which electronic screen devices may have detrimental impacts, but just the anecdota that Silicon Valley execs are concerned for their own children (and also about the impact of social media) gives pause to the notion that these devices are harmless distractions.
reminds me of what the local community college did about 30 years ago they built this nice new pretty library with all the fundraising tactics available …… and took 5 years to actually build it because of a variety of hassles …. the idea tas started about 87 the building began 89 and it was officially in 95…….
The problem ? because of the early 90s recession the state cut back on the edu budgets so a 2 floor 10 room library with 250 shelves opened with maybe 200 books that was donated by companies that they bought the text books from ………
youd see shelves here and there with 5 or 10 boks on it
When I was a kid, I lived within easy walking distance of a public library branch. It was a magical place, full to the brim with more books than I could imagine.
In the past few years, I’ve been back there a few times, and I’ve been shocked at just how few books they have. It’s almost depressing.
But the thing is, it’s still the same building, and the building still has most of the floor space dedicated to efficient placement of bookshelves, and the bookshelves are still as full as they ever were. The library hasn’t actually changed. It’s just my perceptions of it that have, because it was only ever a fairly small branch library, and I’ve since seen many much larger libraries.
At least some of what you’re seeing is not a reduction in reading books, but the advent of just-in-time logistics.
I still read lots of books from the library, but honestly I have no idea if they are on shelves there.
I go to the library’s website, pick a book I want, put in a request, then a few days or months (depending on how popular it is) later, I get an email and the book is on a little shelf right by the entrance filed under my name.
The library is in prime down-town real-estate. Seems like a waste to warehouse books there when you can have a couple of shelves and keep all the books for the region in cheap searchable storage.