By Nook Or By Book

I knew things had changed last week when I heard the following message left on our landline voicemail. (Yes. We still have a landline. According to my wife, it's the number she uses for credit cards, ordering things and for the Optimum Triple Play Reward of 2 free movie tickets at the Clearview Theater on Route 46 on Tuesdays that we have not used in seven years).

This was the message I heard, "Hello? Erika? This is the Lake Hiawatha Public Library. We've realized that you have not checked out any books in quite awhile and, thusly, not incurred a huge amount of late fees which were paying the salaries of a number of our employees. Sadly, we were recently forced to let Betty go after 35 years working here. Please. Start checking out books again."

Question: In this day of computers, smartphones and iPads ... Are libraries obsolete and no longer necessary? 

I am a Reader. My wife is a Reader. We LOVE books. We savor, embrace and seek out new and incredible new books to read. We appreciate great writers and do what we can to support and promote them (Jeffrey Daniel Xavier Somers of Hoboken. One of the best New Jersey writers alive today!)
So, when I recently realized that my wife had crossed over the line from paper and pages to epub and mobi files for her reading fix, I thought, "She's come over to the Dark Side."

Do not get me wrong. I love libraries. Some of my my greatest and most heartwarming memories growing up involve libraries. My parents and the California education system imbued me with a psychotic love of reading and books. I am one of those people who often has 3 books going at a time. These days my Nook is part of the Holy Trinity of Electronic Devices I carry at all times along with my cellphone and iPod.

But, unfortunately, in these days of having all the knowledge of the world a few taps away on a keyboard, have libraries become anachronistic? Are they any longer necessary? It seems to me, when I am in one, aside from a handful of new "bestsellers" found on a small case as you walk in, the rest of the library is merely a housing space for very old Stephen King paperbacks, old DVDs and CDs that people "donated" and some shady looking guys who don't have their own computers and sit all day cruising singles sites.

In my lifetime I have seen the disappearance of drive-in movie theaters, Howard Johnson's, payphones and the Woolworth lunch counter. Do I want to see libraries closed down. No. I want to see parents taking their kids and checking out books, reading them, taking them back late, paying that worth-every-penny 10 cent late fee for each day and then checking out more books.

That and you never know when you might need to find a 15 year old
copy of HARRY POTTER & THE SORCEROR'S STONE on DVD in a hurry.