Prep school plans bookless library

When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books. ... We’re not discouraging students from reading. We see this as a natural way to shape emerging trends and optimize technology.

-- James Tracy, headmaster of Cushing Academy, proponent of the bookless library

There are modes of learning and thinking that at the moment are only available from actual books. There is a kind of deep-dive, meditative reading that’s almost impossible to do on a screen. Without books, students are more likely to do the grazing or quick reading that screens enable, rather than be by themselves with the author’s ideas.

-- William Powers, author of a paper published at Harvard called “Hamlet’s Blackberry: Why Paper is Eternal”