Books As Kindling?

This story is a few months old, but it's too fascinating to let die. Cushing Academy, a prep school outside of Boston, MA, has decided to take bold steps where books and the school library is concerned. Believing that the future is digital, the school is going to do away with most (if not all) of its 20,000+ collection of books.

Electing to invest $500,000 in a new learning center, Cushing is looking at technology to replace traditional books. Are gadgets like Amazon's Kindle, the iPod Touch, and of course computers making books obsolete? The schools actions seem to suggest so...

The mental image of a bookless library sounds completely absurd. How will kids learn to research? What about the benefits of looking at shelves where you might be reaching for one book, but notice three or four other related texts? What about students who don't have financial resources to pay for these technologies??

The reality? 1. Students are already doing most of their research online. 2. Search engines return more results than you could possibly find on a library shelf. And, 3. Schools (especially private schools like Cushing) are making sure every student has the same access to technology, often including sending students home with laptops and handheld devices.

It does indeed sound bizarre. Most of us would never want to give up our libraries. And, the experience of holding a device cannot compare to the feel and smell of a book. But, technological advancements in almost every arena bring about changes that we first resist. Newspapers are struggling in the face of free information online. DJ's have made the move from vinyl to mp3. The counter-arguments sound so familiar - about the look and feel of newspapers/records, etc. - and the thought was unimaginable a decade or two ago. Yet, here we are...

Not having books is a scary thought... But, is it scary because we're losing so much? Or, because we can't imagine what life is like without them...