...deliver them. Again, I'm not 100% sure of the costs to build and staff and heat and maintain a library over a lifetime, nor the percentage of citizens that actually use them. This is really a "retail" vs "on line" type of investment discussion. Take Amazon model and apply to local library. Might it be a better use of money to have a centralized repository and use the local USPS to deliver and return books (and that is just hard cover....digital everything else). Regarding the use, if the same people are using the library, and that represents a very small percentage of the citizenry....then is that a good use of the people's money? I have no doubt some people use the libary a lot, but I suspect those people are a very small percentage of the population. I get a book maybe once or twice a year (hard copy...I too am old and spend too much time in front of the screen).

All this being said, this is probably 'mice nuts" in terms of the impact on a locality's annual budget.