Publishers have become increasingly nervous about the growing use of e-books by library users, who can check out the books remotely without ever entering a library.
But opponents like Mr. Brodsky say that if a relatively novel twist like congestion pricing succeeds, governments desperate for money could start charging people for taking a walk in a city park or entering a library.
Sure, keep some for artistically altered books, which may get those who wouldn't ordinarily enter a library to come in, and which create opportunities for new art forms.
There was another reason that it seemed fitting that I was entering a library with columns and names like Homer and Cicero inscribed above the entrance to click on a computer and open a Web browser: the brilliant online project I was viewing was slowly disintegrating, like so much parchment.
I would hate to enter a library and not be able to find controversial books because they have been removed due to the "nature of the work," where someone has decided that their contents (including certain words) are "offensive" to this or that group.
Smith was supposed to be writing about the Brighton Festival but instead had a flashback memory of the first time she entered a public library in Inverness.
In "Print Is Dead," Jeff Gomez points out that much of the world has already entered a different virtual library: the world of digital media.
"When you enter a big library you realize how little you've read and little you know; how limited your knowledge is," he said.
He pursued a library degree, entered a three-year career at Indiana's revered Lilly Library, moved on to a position at Columbia University, and eventually headed over to NYU in 1993. .
In 1926 the Bibliothèque Nationale entered a consortium of Parisian libraries that, by the late 20th century, included the Arsenal Library and the libraries of the Opéra and of the National Conservatory of Music.
