A Library is Not the Books: An Ethical Obstacle to the Digital Library

Abstract

Casual and thoughtful speakers alike frequently use “library ” as though it were the collective noun for “book”: A herd of cows, a murder of crows, a library of books. In practice it matters little whether “book ” is understood as a specific physical artifact of ink and paper, or whether it refers more generically to any information-containing entity. The consistent point appears to be that in the presenc