Libraries: Too Hipster To Go Digital
On the 29th of October 1969, British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet, ushering us into the digital age. Nearly six decades later, it has revolutionised every aspect of our lives, from the way we shop to how we pay taxes. That's because doing these things digitally is far more efficient and less time-consuming.
So, why are libraries still a thing? Nobody really uses them, and if you asked the average person where their nearest one is, you’d get a strained look of puzzlement.
After all, we got rid of public phones after the invention of the smartphone because they were obsolete and, frankly, deeply unhygienic. Of course, you’ll still see the old-fashioned red boxes around the country, but they’re there for selfies, not phone calls.
Not to get all DOGE about it, but UK taxpayers are forking out £640 million on libraries per year, whilst the government is wringing its hands saying it needs to increase taxes and cut useful public services, like, say, the winter fuel allowance. To put that £640 million into perspective, the ‘essential’ tax on farmers, set to devastate UK agriculture, is only expected to generate £520 million.
So you may, like me, be bemused: why wouldn’t we cut a service that nobody uses and save an industry that everyone depends on? Or, applying even more common sense, why don’t we just digitise libraries and redefine their function into something more practical that actually fulfils a need?
What Needs Could A Digitised Library Meet?
Well, the answer to that question starts by going back to the basics — all the way back to the 3rd century BCE with the founding of perhaps the most famous library of all time, the Library of Alexandria.
See, back then, the concept of libraries was simple. It was a building designed to collect all the world's knowledge and scholars, fostering an environment for intellectual exchange. This was, in fact, the original intention of Tim Berners-Lee, and it's something that a digitised library could achieve.
A collection of academic works designed to further learning, open to the public, but more importantly, supporting the education system and its users. The amount of money schools have to spend on textbooks to teach the syllabus is often beyond their means. As a result, the books you find in classrooms are usually tatty, out of date, and in such small numbers that they have to be shared and cannot be taken home by students to revise.
With this subpar resourcing being publicly funded by taxes, wouldn’t it make more sense for this new digitised library to hold these books instead of a collection of obscure fiction? We’d simultaneously save hundreds of millions and provide much-needed support to an education system being eviscerated by cuts.
This very same logic could be applied to university courses, where a student can run into a bill of hundreds, if not thousands, over the course of a degree.
As for what to do with the dizzying array of government-owned library buildings, well, turn them into council houses and address the housing crisis.
With this rather obvious solution saving hundreds of millions of pounds, supporting a struggling education system, and providing homes, you may be wondering, what's the catch? Well, admittedly, there are a few hurdles, but they're not insurmountable.
The Obstacles
The first is facilitating an overhaul in the way government money is doled out to councils. There has been, for some time, a decentralisation of government, and whilst the idea does have benefits, they only manifest if it's run properly. And it isn’t. The people who take these roles, more often than not, aren’t interested in the local community and see it as a stepping stone to main government, or, in the case of Boris Johnson, premiership.
Currently, local library services are run by councils. The government would have to take this money back to central government in order to set up and maintain the service. And with public opinion in the UK towards central government at an all-time low, it would take a very brave politician to publicly rebuke councils and take funding away.
There is also the issue of creating the digital infrastructure necessary to run the service; however, the government is already heavily investing in this sort of technology to keep up internationally in fields such as quantum computing and AI, so the problem is negligible.
Complications with copyright would be another hurdle, as publishers want to make as much money as possible and may be reticent to give up the over-the-barrel dominance they have on the publicly funded education system. This could be solved by the government giving them an ultimatum: do it, or we won’t use your books. In other words, allowing the market to dictate the value rather than the supplier.
The final, and perhaps most daunting, challenge is the nostalgia NIMBYs who would descend, having sensed a disturbance in their local aesthetic. They would arrive with a disproportionately loud voice, demanding the preservation of something that, if they took a few minutes to think about, serves absolutely no purpose.
The TLDR:
If done correctly, the digitisation of libraries could save hundreds of millions and ease pressure on the education system and housing. But, it requires a competent government and the ability to have rational discourse. So, although it’s a neat and functional idea, it probably won’t happen for a while.
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