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Comment by phendrenad2 | Hacker News Reader

Most public libraries would be better off without books. All of the books in the average public library exist in digital form.

However, go to a college library, and you’ll find tens of thousands of books which are not only not available in digital form, they may be the only remaining copies in existence.

Every time I go to the local college library I’m blown away by the number of obscure books on programming and computer science that simply don’t exist in ebook form, and likely never will (thanks copyright laws!)

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Libraries serve many different needs and for many, books are still important.

That said, some topics like "computing" need serious culling. "Learn Windows 95 in 24 hours" and the hundreds/thousands of utterly obsolete books really should not be wasting space.

That's ultimately what it comes down to... freeing shelf space so there's room for other stuff.

That’s a wacky position. Ebooks with the exception of reference material are dramatically less accessible and more expensive.

Ebook sales are pretty poor vs paper books overall. They aren’t the future of books, but a niche. Sort of like how VCRs didn’t kill movies, but were a complement.

“Most public libraries would be better off without books. All of the books in the average public library exist in digital form.”

Not only is this wildly inaccurate, but even if it were true, it would be prohibitively expensive to acquire digital copies of all print books “in the average public library”. It’s worth noting that not all publishers who make ebooks available to libraries use the ownership model; many lease copies, meaning that the library would have to pay for copies again after a certain amount of time had passed or after a certain number of checkouts.

I'll agree when library ebooks stop being encumbered by DRM which hinder both usability and archival capacity.

Some might be interested: https://www.defectivebydesign.org/

I am in complete agreement.

Physical books are outdated technology that are bad for the environment and outdated the moment they are printed.

Its a very emotional thing to support the library, I'm not sure why it invokes such strong feelings with children/moms, but I dont think its a smart decision to continue wasting space and resources on physical books.

Note: Nothing is black and white. There should be a strong middle-ground here.

> "outdated the moment they are printed"

Maybe (some) technical books, but novels are never outdated.

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