Laudator Temporis Acti

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (Summer-Fall 1868):

In the perplexity in which the literary public now stands with regard to university education, whether studies shall be compulsory or elective; whether by lectures of professors, or whether by private tutors; whether the stress shall be on Latin and Greek, or on modern sciences,—the one safe investment which all can agree to increase is the library. A good book can wait for a reader hundreds of years. Once lodged in the library, it is unexpensive and harmless while it waits. Then it is a good of the most generous kind, not only serving the undergraduates of the college, but much more the alumni, and probably much more still, the scattered community of scholars.

Id. (July 1873?):

Be a little careful about your Library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little, to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you? You will come here and get books that will open your eyes, and your ears, and your curiosity, and turn you inside out or outside in.

But that was then, and this is now. Cushing Academy, founded in 1865 in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, brags:

In 2009, The Fisher-Watkins Library underwent a digital transformation. The Academy replaced the majority of the library's 20,000 printed books with electronic sources as a natural and integral outgrowth of the school's strategic commitment to becoming the national leader in 21st-century secondary education, and to providing students with the necessary tools to become lifelong learners in a socially – and globally – connected world. We wanted to create a library that reflected the reality of how students do research and fostered what they do -- one that went beyond the stacks and embraced the digital future.