> Why wouldn’t they?
Because their primary purpose was to provide open access to literature and information, which is now widely available thanks to the internet.
Because their primary purpose was to provide open access to literature and information, which is now widely available thanks to the internet.
Citation needed. If you don't have money and aren't willing to pirate, what you can get on the internet is quite limited. There's Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg. A lot of the most reliable knowledge is still locked up in books, because the internet is disproportionately used for entertainment, advertising, etc
This is flatly untrue - and begs the question, have you ever actually used a library? Or a librarian?
Library science is information science. Librarians are the key to finding new information when you don’t know where to go. Professional librarians are incredible resources that are criminally underused and woefully under-appreciated. Libraries will even order books for you from other libraries, if they don’t have a local copy.
Yes, I've been to a library. When I go, the librarians tend to look up what's available on... the internet. So, prior to the widespread use of the internet, their ability to look up information was severely limited.
You're wondering if I've ever been to a library. I'm wondering if you understand what a monumental shift the internet was.
Because I've never encountered a librarian that just uses 'the internet' to find out what books are available on a subject, they have specific databases at their disposal which are updated versions of the card-file of old, and those databases are not generally accessible to the public
Even if you reduce a library to this primary purpose (and maintain that’s it purpose must be static for time immemorial), there are still people that don’t use the internet.
Some can’t. Some think they can’t. Some just won’t. Some don’t have affordable access. Some don’t have access at all.
Libraries still fulfill this information access purpose to a not-insignicant portion of the population in the US.
I think we’re in a bubble here where our idea of minimal computer / internet skills can greatly diverge from the reality of the broader community around us.
And that’s not even touching on the other reasons I listed in my original comment about why libraries still matter.