By JAMES D. WATTS JR. Scene Writer on Sep 10, 2009, at 3:17 PM Updated on 9/10 at 3:17 PM
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A story in today's Boston Globe details how a Massachusetts prep school has rid its library of the 20,000 or so books that it once owned, and will be replacing them with electronic readers, widescreen televisions and a coffee shop with a $12,000 espresso machine.
Read the story: A library without the books
As someone whose fondness for books and libraries is such that he remembers the time he was accidentally locked inside the library at the University of Oklahoma as not an unpleasant experience, this news is disturbing.
Understandable, maybe even inevitable. But still disturbing.
It's understandable because so much of our society and technology discounts, even demeans, the idea of the written word.
The thought of taking pains to craft one's words, because you know they are going to be committed to a medium that has some air of permanence to it, is becoming an increasingly foreign concept.
The thought of reading anything that does not easily fit onto a single computer -- or even cellular telephone -- screen -- can send some people into a panic.
The main thing I get from this story out of Boston is that this particular school does not want it students to discover anything new on their own. Because that is what a library of books offers -- a place to discover something you never imagined before.
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