You're missing the point — that's like calling a your smart phone an mp3 player. Librarians are really educators who provide a resource for the community. So it's a community center with a brain. And sadly the libraries that are getting closed are in the communities that really need them the most.
I'm not saying libraries are useless. I'm saying that much of their use is better served by the internet. Find a job? Do research? Navigate government documents? Even with respect to education we're seeing innovation from things like the Khan Academy.
The internet won't/can't replace everything a library does. Like providing a physical space, or services for elderly (which are often not connected).
That's my point, that perhaps they should focus on the areas where they truly serve a distinct (and valuable) service. Not only might they be more successful by focusing on a narrow set of services, but they might become more affordable to run.
Find a job? Do research? Navigate government documents? Even with respect to education we're seeing innovation from things like the Khan Academy.
If you expect the average citizen to do all those things online it may be reasonable, maybe for a generation, to replace at least some of the gone libraries by Internet literacy centers.
This is the key point. Many, many people do not have the informational literacy to even begin to do research work on their own in any medium, let alone on the Internet.
Furthermore, many documents and resources aren't digitized and aren't on any kind of networked computer or database, so how exactly is someone supposed to access these materials and in a timely fashion? Librarians specialize in knowing how to find and navigate those materials and sources.
