WSJ: Anthony Grafton is worried about the NY Public Library

Anthony Grafton, a professor of history at Princeton and past president of the American Historical Association, is distressed when he contemplates the changes afoot at the New York Public Library.

“My stomach hurts,” he concludes, “when I think about NYPL, the first great library I ever worked in, turned into a vast internet cafe where people can read the same Google Books … that they could access at home or Starbucks.” And yet he concedes that, given the revolution in progress in the world of books and libraries, he cannot definitively say that the library has chosen the wrong path. (Princeton’s Firestone Library, he observes, has consciously eschewed the path chosen by the NYPL, choosing to keep physical books at the center of its mission. He can’t say that’s the right decision, either.)

...Caleb Crain explains how the non-circulation of books at the NYPL has been an essential part of its culture — something that makes the library different from, and perhaps superior to, a university library....