I think we're talking past each other a little. When I mentioned places without internet coverage, I mean rural places where you just can't get internet. If you live in the city, you can always get online if you really want it, even by borrowing from a friend. Compare that to places outside the big metropolitan cities, where information access was impossible before the internet, because they would at most have a tiny library with little to offer. The internet was an enormous revolution in rural communities, I lived to see it. That was in the 90s, and now the shadow libraries have made physical libraries obsolete.

Shadow libraries and eInk readers have done a thousand times more to give people access to books and information, than all physical libraries combined. That's why I don't think there's any future for physical libraries.

> Your purpose. Many others use them for different purposes.

I think if you ask anybody what a library is for, they'll say for reading and borrowing books. The money being plowed into libraries could be used for subsidizing e-readers and that would give better information access to millions of people, instead of a few thousand of people living in the right place to enjoy good physical libraries.

> The American Library Association says each library decides it's own purpose.

And the politicians deciding the budgets decide if they want to pay for that.

> Many, such as the city library near me, are choosing to become community centers attempting to provide a third place. I'd argue this has value the internet cannot replace.

Completely agree, but they shouldn't really be called libraries by that point.