Actually, Conor, It's Librarians Doing Their Damndest to Provide Library Services to Where They Are Needed

Link to October 25 Wall Street Journal article, "New Library Technologies Dispense With Librarians".  (Thanks to Tony Driessen for the catch.)

Well, first of all, these lockers wouldn't exist without remote access to a shared public-access library catalog, such as the 41-member LINKcat consortium.   Not to mention a physical collection that needs to be 'developed'.  Can we please get over this either-or-stuff?  Paging Paul Saffo.

Washington County Library

(Red arrow notes Hugo's location)

Dear Wall Street Journal, we call it 'outreach'.

Excerpt: Some library directors worry that such machines are the first step toward a future in which the physical library—along with its reference staffs and children's programs—fades from existence. James Lund, director of the Red Wing Public Library in Red Wing, Minn., recently wrote skeptically about the "vending library" in Library Journal, a trade publication.

"The basis of the vending machine is to reduce the library to a public-book locker," Mr. Lund said in an interview. "Our real mission is public education and public education can't be done from a vending machine. It takes educators, it takes people, it takes interaction."

Public libraries are an American creation. The first was introduced by Benjamin Franklin, who created a co-operative library funded by people who used it. The first tax-supported library was founded in Peterborough, N.H., in 1833, according to Larry Nix, a retired librarian and library historian. Today there are about 16,700 public library buildings in the country.