When combined with poor education systems, the outcome must be ignorance.
In the event of global catastrophe we won't even know what we need to learn.
It's worse than that since even if we had books the real knowledge about how to rebuild is stored in past generations of doers. Even if you had a physical book on how to make a smelter, or a car factory, or even how to hunt for food, that is far different than actually doing it, having experience with it. I think many people, especially geeks, vastly overestimate their ability to adapt to changing conditions with the aid of books, physical or otherwise.
Also, you're right - all things being equal, digital content in lieu of physical books is strictly worse. The oldest words we know of were written in stone, clay, papyrus. Words that were written in magnetic particles only 10 years ago are lost entirely.
It's not practical to have 100's of reference books and texts, but if I've got access to a good library I can juxtapose several references and texts in a way that digital technologies can't emulate.
Some libraries use wonderful classification systems such as Bliss, which really appeals to me for the way it seemingly shelves books on different subjects according to the kind of thinking thats gone into them.
Yes, I agree, those who are already interested or motivated need less help.
But to educate most people, and young developing minds especially, brief browsy exposure to unplanned topics is what might create the interest and motivation in the first place. The peripheral glances at compelling covers and spines. The topics you didn’t come to search for and maybe you didn’t even know exist.
You can’t search an opaque virtual library for what you haven’t yet seen a spark or crumb of. Hands-on, tactile, flip flip flip, put it back, flip flip flip … irreplaceable.
Kids are naturally curious about the world, but keeping them engaged with learning and growing through exposure and study largely falls on parents and teachers.
We're living in the Information Age (for better or worse), and my kids have been exposed to far more topics than I came across in libraries. It's easy to keep them interested, but I feel like the disappearance of libraries reduces the accuracy and quality of Information.
I've seen mine and other's kids rattle off a crazy amount of "facts" but still fall short in problem solving, applying knowledge, etc.
A section of a library I used to visit used Bliss categorisation, which is just so conducive to discovery!
We want ignorance to be fought societally - the people you interact with should be as little ignorant as possible.
> online databases
Found users are hit with the highest legislative sanctions, increasingly.