How will the school library be influenced by the use of technology in the sec education? Will it still be necessary to have a library at school if every information is digitally available?
Answer for Questions & Answers for the future of Secondary Education in 2020
A difficult question to answer... Both cases could be made very well, as we are already
experiencing a decline in library usage due to digitalization, whereas on the other hand academic
research is emphatically done on the original source, and not on (digital) copies or transcripts.
It is my personal opinion that while library usage by the general public will decline
asymptotically to an almost zero-point, researchers will forever want to see and hold the original
source. Therefore, there is a future for libraries, but in a different mode. The old raison d’
etre of being a central place to provide reading materials will no longer keep the library
existing; instead, it will be a sort of museum, a central repository of valuable original
manuscripts.
All content being available digitally, the reading room will not be as useful as it has been
throughout history. The new core function of being a repository however will mean that libraries
are still necessary in the future. A library may then for instance promote research more than
general reading.