Sixteen years ago, as Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa and O.J. Simpson fled very slowly from the police in a white Ford Bronco, Amazon.com was born. It was the first of four blows to public libraries: the others were Google (b. 1998), Wikipedia (b. 2001) and the Kindle (b. 2007). With these shiny new tools to hand, why would anyone step inside a library? Except to escape the rain.
My piece on reinventing the library.
pic: the new Library of Birmingham
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I would go in a library if it's closer than a bookstore. I like the tactile nature of the book, the ability to flip back-and-forth easily to check something I read earlier, to have a physical pile of books I am researching in readily at hand for cross-reference...you get the point.
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