My Prediction of the Future of the Book

A few years ago I was a library student worker at Weber State University. I spent my days with books  shelving them, helping people find them, and pulling them when they needed repairs. I was promoted to special collections where I took care of books hundreds of years old that were never checked out, and rarely moved, they just sat there beautiful first editions,  a time capsule of their past.

Another part of my job was scanning books and digitizing them so that they could be read digitally without ruining the originals. At the library that was their future.  The beautiful hard copies on a shelf rarely touched, and the knowledge within them digitized for the world to see.

It is my opinion that digital ebooks will be how books are read in the future.  We will all have a tablet or kindle packed  full with the reading material we desire to engulf.  Apps such as Oyster, Netflix for books,  will become more popular. Where you can look over a database of hundreds of books online and just get what you want to read, all at the graze of your fingertips. Digital databases of libraries will also grow allowing for echeckout on needed reading materials.

Of course there will be the purists, the ones who will seek  out the beautiful hardback, who love the pleasure of thumbing paper between their fingers and smelling freshly printed ink. Similar to those who love listening to old vinyls, they will treasure each book,  constantly dusting and caring for them, displaying them proudly for the world to see that they have not given up on their treasures. 

A treasure on the shelf and the knowledge on a computer, that's where the future of books is going, and it is already happening. So say farewell to those enormous textbooks and their back pain, and splurge on the originals of your favorite series, their price will be even higher soon.