2.-Some say Internet portals will be tomorrow's conduits for managing knowledge. No matter how sophisticated our digital world becomes, books, like paper, are an important feature of the physical world that will never disappear.
Paper is still important because it provides context.
When you read a newspaper, for example, the paper gives you important clues about the content if you look at what stories are above the fold, and how large the typeset is, etc. Online newspapers cannot give those contextual clues nearly as well. So libraries will be important because they will continue to house the paper resources that society will never give up. Libraries become nothing more than physical archives for the world's printed matter. Jerry Mechling Libraries are certainly not doomed, but they will have to adjust.