Back in the day, the only place you could go to read a book and gain meaningful knowledge about a subject was the library. This is not the case anymore and there’s no need to tell why. Libraries all over the world are struggling to remain open as the Internet has been slowly overtaking their role in the last two decades.
The article will be divided into an optimistic and pessimistic prognosis about the survival of libraries, because it’s important to read both perspectives and make up your own mind on the matter.
Libraries Will Not Survive
The Internet was initially created for the military, although soon its potential reshaped the original purpose. The World Wide Web was launched in 1989 as a means for scientists and universities to communicate, but even they didn’t expect what was to follow once the Internet reached the average person.
Internet users began creating websites filled with information that could be easily accessed by everyone around the world. True, not that many people had Internet access in the 1990’s, but by the 2010’s, this had swiftly changed.
Wikipedia, dubbed the Free (Internet) Encyclopaedia, was founded in 2001, and it’s now the fifth most visited website, welcoming over 6.1 billion users per month. The topics you can find on the website are truly endless, thus its scope is no match to a physical encyclopaedia.
Wiki is only the tip of the iceberg though. If one is looking for a quick way to learn something new, they can simply Google it and receive millions of results. YouTube has also become the go-to place for users to acquire new knowledge in a manner which can be more interesting than reading a book.
For academic purposes, one can use online peer-reviewed journals as they are easily accessible and offer the academic integrity and reliability that most Internet websites cannot.
Another obstacle to libraries is Amazon. Amazon started off as an online book-seller, but you can now find everything there, including food. Amazon is not a library since you have to purchase the book, but its prices are so competitive that you can easily find books for a dollar or two.
The reader then wonders why they have to go to the library to take a book and then return it, when they can have one delivered for free on the next day with Prime for the price of chewing gum.
The last nail in the coffin of libraries is the e-book.
You no longer have to worry about damaging a book, because the book is just a file. Not only that, but if you want to read a new book in the middle of the night, you can purchase an e-book, which is cheaper than a physical copy. You can also return an e-book (depending on the vendor) if you weren’t immediately captivated by it.
There’s even a free e-book website, Gutenberg (Project Gutenberg), which has so far turned classics and more obscure titles to easily accessible e-books. Gutenberg is gradually becoming a major competitor to the library.
Libraries Will Survive
The library can withstand the test of time, but it will likely change to accommodate the fast-paced world. E-books are generally thought to be harmful to the library model, but libraries have in fact welcomed them warmly.
Many contemporary libraries offer a long list of e-books to the point where e-books make up a quarter or even a third of the titles offered. E-books are cheaper to acquire and easy to store and libraries know this. There’s no limit to the e-books on demand as long as the library software supports them.
The same goes for peer-reviewed online journals. Everyone can easily purchase one, but as opposed to e-books, these journals are very expensive and it doesn’t make sense for a casual reader, not even for a researcher, to buy access to multiple journals when they find a library offering for free.
Libraries also preserve old books that might never be turned into e-books, and as such they are extremely valuable to students, researchers, and avid readers.
The Covid-19 pandemic, for example, has shown that libraries still play an important role in learning and researching, with many students blaming library closures for their lower marks, despite having the whole Internet and even online academic libraries at their disposal.
The communal factor is also not be easily disregarded. Spending time at the library is an experience that many of us cherish and as such we would not allow the Internet to destroy our safe haven. We already live a rather sheltered life, so taking the library away is only going to make matters worse.
Last but not least, of the arguments on why the library will survive is simple – free books. You cannot argue with that, and no matter how many new ways of acquiring knowledge we will create in the future, the library remains the free and fun option for many.