"Soon" is not "now"

A library without the books

This year, after having amassed a collection of more than 20,000 books, officials at the pristine campus about 90 minutes west of Boston have decided the 144-year-old school no longer needs a traditional library. The academy%u2019s administrators have decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked their sprawling stacks - the classics, novels, poetry, biographies, tomes on every subject from the humanities to the sciences. The future, they believe, is digital.

But we are still in the present. The technology (i.e. a really great ebook reading device) is not yet in widespread use or maybe even in existence. (I suspend judgment on Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader and others.) Soon, perhaps, we'll have a great reader. But soon is not now.