The 21st Century Library

Currently, approximately 90% of North American library systems offer digital services where residents can download audiobooks and ebooks for free. The system works similarly to a traditional library: a region purchases books in digital formats and “lends” them to patrons who can download them.

Since there are a limited number of books available, unlike a platform like Netflix, you often end up having to wait for someone to “return” their book. I’ve used this service frequently, and it’s remarkably user-friendly. To minimize my waiting time and maximize the scope of possible coverage, I still carry around every library card I’ve ever gotten my hands on1.

But having to keep so many library cards, and my selection of books being tied to orthogonal employment decisions, seems, frankly, kind of silly. What if instead of having a separate digital library for each US county, we just had one single Federal Library? It could be a vast library system offering all U.S. legal residents free access to digital ebooks, audiobooks, etc.

As a kid, libraries were instrumental in my education. As I’ve written before, I am extremely dyslexic, but because libraries had a wide selection of audiobooks on CD, I was still able to consume an honestly insane amount of literature. Since the early 2000s thought the world, and how we consume media, has changed. Who even has a CD player now, let alone would reach for it when looking for something to fill the passing moments of their day?

The public library system provides remarkable value for its cost. It’s one of the few tax-funded services—along with national parks, public schools, policing, etc.—that I’m enthusiastic about paying toward. We should modernize this institution for the 21st century.

Here’s how I would implement this “reform”:

First, I would offer to buy out every municipality’s selection of books. Some, of course, would want to keep theirs to supplement the federal offerings, but ideally, you could credibly communicate to most that their services would be basically obsolete. Then, you could just contract with OverDrive to host the product as they currently do for local library systems.

Second, I would allocate money—say $2 billion a year ($6 per American)—to purchase new books for the Federal Library. I would want these books to be chosen from a list submitted by users or in some other way reflect the real preferences of America. The key would be that popular books, which regularly have waiting lists, along with hot new releases, should be prioritized.

But why stop with just books? Assuming this went well, you could contract with universities to hire professors from all of the top US schools and have them record lectures on every subject known to man. We could create a 100-hour lecture series that would walk someone from absolute beginner math through differential equations or simple proofs2.

To wrap up my thoughts on this. The state serves a couple of key purposes, but to me, helping each citizen achieve their full potential is a significant one. Giving my fellow Americans the chance to access all of humanity’s greatest works of writing for “free” is something I would gladly spend $6 a year on.