Into the future: The bookless library

I guess the future is now, and we're looking at it at Cushing Academy, a prep school near Boston.

According to The Boston Globe, the school cleared out all its bound volumes and will replace them with electronic books. There are other articles on the subject from engadget and Make magazine, too.

Here's the skinny:

Instead of a library, the academy is spending nearly $500,000 to create a “learning center,’’ though that is only one of the names in contention for the new space. In place of the stacks, they are spending $42,000 on three large flat-screen TVs that will project data from the Internet and $20,000 on special laptop-friendly study carrels. Where the reference desk was, they are building a $50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine. And to replace those old pulpy devices that have transmitted information since Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1400s, they have spent $10,000 to buy 18 electronic readers made by Amazon.com and Sony. Administrators plan to distribute the readers, which they’re stocking with digital material, to students looking to spend more time with literature.

The Globe says it isn't Fahrenheit 451, that cautionary Ray Bradbury tale where books are replaced by electronic media and firemen exist only to burn books and the houses in which they are stored. But somehow, that book keeps coming to mind as I read the accounts.

I like technology, and I am seldom far from my laptop. As I write this, I am also searching for ebook readers for this laptop, preferably of the open-source kind (just finished downloading ybook from Spacejock Software). And I have a few electronic books on hard drive, mostly from the free Gutenberg project.

But while there's a real gee-whiz aspect to electronic books, nothing beats the bound, on-paper book. Just like you can't truly reproduce the sound of a Hammond B-3 organ electronically (though many have tried), you can't recreate the feel of paper, the smell of ink. Maybe it's my age that has something to do with it (though to say they used scrolls in my elementary school is nothing but a vicious rumor). Small as it is, I can't stow my laptop in my hip pocket. I don't have to worry about batteries running out in a paperback. I can't run to the thrift store to pick up another armload of e-books. And, even though my geek quotient is relatively high, I do draw the line at taking the laptop into the bathroom, but that's my favorite reading room. I have the permanent ring around my butt to prove it.

OK. We're in a holiday weekend. You may have a barbecue or picnic or time with friends, but at least carve out a hole in your schedule and curl up with a book.

Any kind of book, as long as it's a real one.

Photo: Cushing Academy's library is now in transition. “When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books,’’ said headmaster James Tracy. (Mark Wilson for The Boston Globe)