2050 AD - Library

Sonny: Mummy, what are you going to tell me today?

Mummy: Today, I am going to tell you about what were called Libraries. When I was your age, we used to go to a library to borrow and read books. Every school and college also had a library for its students.

Sonny: How did you download them at a library? i just have to go my college website and choose the ebook i want to read. And did you have to travel all the way to one to get books? Interesting!!

Mummy: Everything couldn’t be downloaded sitting at home as you can do today! You had to go to a library to get books. There were stacks of books stacked subject-wise in a library. You had books for children, novels for teenagers, books on art, Science, History, Computers, Films and every subject you can think of. You could go to your interest area and look around for a book you might want to read and get it issued. And then you go back to the library to return the book after you finish reading it and get more issued.

Sonny: Woa...which meant more travelling? You had to carry the book everywhere you went? Gosh! That must be such a pain....travelling to the library so many times carrying all those books!

Mummy: Yes, it was at times! But it had a charm of its own.....you could spend hours with books around you for company. A library was a silent zone where you were not supposed to talk making it an ideal place to read in peace.

Sonny: And how many books can you have on shelves like that? And what about the space that you need to store all those books? you mean you actually had big spaces to physically store all those books? What a waste of space!!

Mummy: There were a few thousand books of all subjects put together. How many more could you explore in one go! And they had to be stored that way since that was the only way we could explore information before super pendrives and online libraries replaced physical libraries of our times!

Sonny: Well! i can't imagine walking all around shelves trying to look foe a book i'd like to read! My super pen drive can hold 50,000 ebooks and an equal number of journals with pictures and videos. So whenever i have free time, i just have to insert the pendrive on to my palmtop and click on the memory button to go to the book i was reading. i don’t have to go look for them anywhere or return them to anyone. i can also look for latest titles and topics on the web anytime...anywhere and just download them for free in seconds!

Mummy: Well! That’s called progress Sonny boy!!