Robert Darnton writes a defense of the New York Public Libaray over at the New York Review of Books:
Few buildings in America resonate in the collective imagination as powerfully as the New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. The marble palace behind the stone lions is seen by many as the soul of the city. For a century it provided limitless possibilities of gaining knowledge and satisfying curiosity for immigrants just off the boat, and it still opens access to worlds of culture for anyone who walks in from the street. Tamper with that building and you risk offending some powerful sensitivities.
Yet the trustees of the New York Public Library—I write as one of them but only in my capacity as a private individual—have decided to rearrange a great deal of that sacred space. According to a plan given preliminary approval by them last February, they will sell the run-down Mid-Manhattan branch library—just opposite the main public library on Fifth Avenue—and the Science, Industry, and Business Library (SIBL) at Madison Avenue and 34th Street, and they will use the proceeds to expand the interior of the 42nd Street building. They will not touch the famous façade on Fifth Avenue, but they will install a new circulating library on the lower floors to replace the Mid-Manhattan branch, whose collections will be incorporated into the holdings of the main library.
All this shifting about of books will require rebuilding parts of the infrastructure at 42nd Street. The steel stacks now hidden under the great Rose Main Reading Room on the third floor will be replaced by the new branch and business library on the lower floors. Several grand rooms on the second floor will be refurbished for the use of readers and writers, who will be provided with carrels, computer stations, a lounge, and possibly a café. Most of the three million volumes from the old stacks will remain in the building, either in redesigned storage space or in shelving located under Bryant Park. But many—for the most part books that are rarely consulted and journals that are also available online—will be shipped to the library’s storage facility in Princeton, New Jersey, along with some of the holdings from the SIBL.
I hope they can maintain the space in a way that is consistent with people engaged in thought. Grand Central Station is a marvelous place because you feel that your movements are important. A library can make your thoughts feel important but you don't really want to read a book in the middle of Grand Central Station.
"But many—for the most part books that are rarely consulted and journals that are also available online—will be shipped to the library’s storage facility in Princeton, New Jersey"
Just last week I got a call from the US Supreme Court, they needed photocopies of a couple of pages from an obscure edition of an obscure legal dictionary. No one in DC had a copy, not even the Library of Congress. But somehow, we in Toledo are one of 11 libraries world wide (that are on WorldCat -- worldwide library online catalog) that have it. Never throw out old, obscure books, because the next day you'll need it.
Happening everywhere, sadly. The Boston Public Library, where I worked for ten years and was arguably one of the top six or eight public libraries in the world, is now, between staff cutback and moving material to "remote storage" a euphemism for getting them out of the way so they can be gotten rid of at some future date, is a shell of what it once was. As far as civic governments are concerned, the books are nothing but a bother, and those of us who think words still matter are fewer every day.
Very sad, man.