When was the last time you walked into the library? I think most people did self-study in the library, read books and pick up girls in their last year of college. But with the advent of the electronic age, many books have become e-books, which can be read without a library at all. But is the library really useless? Can it really only be a pawn in the scale competition between universities? Can only be a mask of a city?

The Pew Research Center recently conducted a comprehensive survey in the United States. The purpose of the survey is to know whether the library is still useful in modern society. The survey questions include the demand of community residents for the library, whether the number of people borrowing books from the library is increasing or decreasing, and so on. As expected, for decades, fewer and fewer people have stepped into the library door. This seems to explain another problem: libraries are becoming irrelevant. Although the scope of this survey is in the United States, as we all know, the results of this survey are the same as long as it is global. In China, the answer to this question is even more obvious, because the number of our libraries is surprisingly small, and it is getting less and less, even when I ask you, "Where is the library in your city?" You can't answer at all. How many people can go to the library?

The premise of this survey is that people still have a strong desire to acquire knowledge, but the way for people to acquire knowledge is no longer libraries, but various e-books or magazines. If libraries want to survive, it's time to reform. In Toronto Public Library, you can borrow not only books, but also various tools, including various electric drills, grinders, fishing rods and cooking equipment. The most peculiar thing is that the library has set up some unique function rooms where various meetings and even parties can be held. As far as I know, there are actually 3D printing devices in this library. These measures make the attendance rate of this library extremely high.

Christopher Pratt, director of the New York Public Library, also reformed the library. But the curator told the reporter, "So far, there are still 15% families in the United States who have no access to the Internet and have to rely on the library for study." It is in this environment that the reading or relaxing function of the library can no longer meet the demand. Recently, the New York Public Library held various training lectures. In the programming class, the participants are surprisingly serious, and both e-books and music are downloaded. Therefore, the number of library users has not decreased, but has gradually increased. This is a successful case, but it also has some disadvantages, that is, the commercialization of the library will be very obvious, which will directly lead to the destruction of the reading atmosphere.

These two libraries are not small and can represent most of the libraries in the mainstream world. Do you want to continue your famous festivals and no one cares, or do you want to keep pace with the times so that everyone can get knowledge from the library in different ways? This choice is difficult, but most people will choose the latter. For domestic users, the library is still a distant concept, but the country is increasing investment in this area, so we should see these problems when building the library, and don't let the library be eliminated by the market and society before it is born. (Science fiction Galaxy Constantine/Wen)

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