Good evening everyone. How are you all? I hope you're all doing very well. In today's contest. Our topic was the importance and the relevance of libraries. And this is a very fascinating take. Because we can talk lengths about the importance of libraries even in today's world. So I believe I'll just start right there. Let's go back to the old ages. When writing was first discovered.
The very first form of writing was in the clay tablets. And then humankind invented paper. They started writing in papers. And at the same time many monasteries, which were the schools of back then, had a job of rewriting the information on the clay tablets onto paper to preserve for the next generation. It was a very novel thing to do and that practice is to some extent relevant today as well. After several hundred years of writing on paper, When humans invented the computer in the word processor, we moved onto digital paper. Now instead of writing with hands we type with keyboards. And again, now there is a certain group or simply normal people in their own personal capacity, are we writing books in the digital format to preserve them for the next generation. Now all that is well and good but there is an underlying fact that has always been ignored. The fact of simply people who are not rich enough to afford a certain technology at a certain time. Even back then when paper was first invented it wasn't very accessible right away. So not everyone could write on paper and not everyone could rewrite the clay tablets onto paper. So some stuck to the clay tablets from longer than the others and the same way some people are sticking to paper compared to the digital work processors of today. Those tell people who can't simply afford it.
Libraries or clay tablets of the old or the digital repositories of the future will always be the gateway between the present and future. It is a place where people will learn about their past and they will store knowledge for their future. So the term Library will always be relevant and it will always be necessary. But physical books and paper made out of trees, they might be on their way out. But at the same time there isn't mass adoption yet. There are people who barely have enough to eat for a whole day, Even they deserve to read and acquire knowledge. So if they can't acquire the technology needed for the digital copies or e-libraries or whatever, where will they get their knowledge from? Physical copies of books and actual libraries enable them to acquire the knowledge they need to move forward in the world and we are seeing that people around the world are donating books to these underdeveloped places so that they can educate themselves. Maybe someday they will be solvent enough to afford digital technologies and read from PDF readers instead of actual paper, but till then physical books are still as important as PDFs if not more.
For that and that reason alone libraries will be relevant and physical books will remain relevant for the distant future too. Maybe someday, out there in the future, all knowledge will be digitized and archived on hard drives instead of shelves.