By Howard Kim, Staff Reporter
Libby, Audible, Nook. Libraries have gained a lot of competition over the last few decades — and they can’t keep up anymore. Their inventories of physical literature have become obsolete.
The reasoning is simple. When libraries first came around, they played a vital role in society because they facilitated the sharing of literature and the dissemination of knowledge. However, technology that allows for instant access to these vast stores of information has made keeping physical copies unnecessary, and libraries and their patrons are already feeling the impacts of this change. According to the 2021 Freckle Report: Digital or Diverse? by Tim Coates, the former head of Waterstone’s bookshops, use of print books sank by 29% from 2019 to 2021, reflecting the downward trend of printed literature.
Howard Kim can be reached at [email protected].
