The Berlin city libraries absolutely have spaces for children to play (loudly) and also make point of events with readings for children, and so on. A generation will grow up associating libraries as part of their life.
There is nothing that will suck the enjoyment out of a story faster than a high-school curriculum.
Watch them struggle.
Depending on the forum, and the size of the comments, you'll sometimes see something like:
TL;DR
"too long; didn't read"
In some cases, you'll see a post where there will be a "TL;DR" section summarizing the "long form" version just below it.
The funny thing is, the "long form" might only be a paragraph or two, but apparently for a certain segment of the population who read forums, even that much information is "TL;DR" worthy.
These people don't want to read anything that won't fit inside a tweet. I'd dare say that for some, even 280 characters is just too much text to digest.
It leaves no room for thoughtful discourse. It leaves no room for intelligent debate and conversation.
I see such brush-offs of conversation online, and couple it with what I have heard of some people who eschew being alone; who need noise (particularly people around them talking with each other) so that they don't have to listen to their own thoughts - and it makes me shudder to think to what end our society will arrive at.
In a way, we are already witnessing its decline.
No, libraries serve a specific purpose. You can want them to be banks, or restaurants, or laundromats or whatever, but that doesn't make them anything but libraries. And besides, everyone else wants libraries to be libraries, so you've been outvoted in that regard.
And that when a society devalues scholarship, it's on its way to the condition of, say, Venezuela.
