I just finished reading today’s article from The Atlantic Why We Can’t Afford Not to Create a Well-Stocked National Digital Library System which highlights 9 reasons why the United States needs to jump out to DL bandwagon. Don’t worry — the article doesn’t advocate for abandoning traditional print collections, but rather for expanding and evolving the already existent reading practices.
The article goes on to discuss digital library set-ups around the world:
Europeans countries like France are–at least in terms of politicians’ rhetoric–closer than we are. There is even a Euro digital library portal. China has already amassed a huge digital collection, with six million books scanned as of 2006. A Wikipedia page lists dozens of government and nongovernment digital library projects, ranging from Project Gutenberg, probably the first, to the New Zealand Text Center.
Global Librarianship 