Budgets are being slashed, yes, but I believe the nationwide economic meltdown has a bit more to do with that than your assumptions about declining usage.

What a crackpot.

I think you’ll find large urban public library systems (e.g., the New York Public Library) for some time to come. They’re simply large enough to have momentum.

For smaller systems, and especially single-branch suburban libraries, forget it. They’ve been irrelevant for a while.

Librarians used to ameliorate their fear of services like Google by saying to each other, “Well, people depend on quality information.” They don’t. If information is barely good enough but easier to get, that’s what they’ll go for.

On top of that, public libraries don’t have comprehensive collections. People come in all the time looking for information about things such as property. They have to go to the city clerk’s office for that. That’s a loss for public libraries. Those people aren’t coming back.

And the people that do use libraries are, unfortunately, useless. If there were more of them, it might be a different story. But there aren’t. Public institutions require a critical mass of public support. In a lot of places, libraries are on the edge of that cliff.