alt Hacker NewsLibraries serve a lot purpose than you are giving credit for.
Libraries are a general facility for the public, they offer the standard books and other rental type arrangements although they are so much more than that!
- Access to computers
- Access to internet
- Access to printing
- Access to 3D Printing
- Access to Meeting rooms
- Access to Mental Health Services
- Access to Archive Rooms (newspapers, seed archives, etc).
They serve as a repository for everything physical. Most libraries have archive rooms with various artifacts from the region, including newspapers, publications, recordings, etc. Most of this stuff isn't available online.
Visit a library near a University or School and it becomes packed full of students researching and studying, even if most aren't accessing the books, the rooms, desk and facilities themselves are important.
Not everyone is willing to pirate books, willing to setup Synology devices, etc. A library grants an official place to access things in a legal way, easily (and for free!) among many other things.
>Not everyone is willing to pirate books,
Practically no one is willing to do it. They'd have to be interested in books first. And no one is. Not only is "books" not the first thing in your list, it's not even the last thing. Books might have once been seen as luxuries, and the idea of a lending library allowed those in poverty to get a taste of wealth, so to speak... but they get dumped into landfills by the truckload today and can be had for pennies (or fractions of pennies, actually). So you don't want them anymore.
It's bizarre that it hurts you so much to tell a truth about you which couldn't be more plainly obvious. You don't like books. The book publishing industry is literally dying, that's how little you like books.
>A library grants an official place to access things in a legal way, e
But none of you want to access them. You just like the idea that, if somehow you suddenly did want a book, that you'd be able to go get one for free, effortlessly. Because even if you did want a book, you sure as hell wouldn't want one badly enough to expend an iota of effort to obtain one.