“Even though I lived right across the street from it for many years, I never went inside. I never sat in its reading room. I never checked out a book. I never explored its stacks to go through old volumes of bound periodicals in some research project. Why would I do that? Why, when I can order up pretty much anything I want online, any time I want. Admittedly, the library is free (thank you Benjamin Franklin for that concept), but the web is also free (at least so far), and instant and much much easier to reference and find stuff than in the stacks (though less romantic, in a literary sense).”
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Michael Rosenblum: What’s a Library?
The internet isn’t free for a lot of people. Most people have to pay a phone or cable company for access. The library is one of the few places you can go where you can get free internet access.
What this article reveals to me mostly is that Mr. Rosenblum isn’t capable of thinking about anyone but himself.