The storage density differential between paper/print and digital storage is ... staggering.

One of my favourite illustrations is that of the Central Social Institution of Prague. From photos of it, you'll understand where Futurama got its flying desks from:

<https://www.vintag.es/2020/01/central-social-institution-pra...>

I've guestimated the total possible data storage capacity at about 500 GB, with a likely achieved storage of far less, probably more on the order of 25 GB. You could tuck the whole archive into a microSD card on your mobile phone or tablet.

Some discussion here:

<https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/108388654028938414>

The problem with digital archives is discoverability and browseability. Shelf-scanning books in a good library really is a pleasure, though there are alternatives in the digital world, mostly involving traversing bibliographies, references, and citations. Not the same, but similar.

There's also the Star Trek convention of electronic documents being bound to a specific tablet or reader, rather than being data beamed or transmitted between devices. Yet another case of visual storytelling trumping technical rigour, though it has a certain charm.

The brutalism of a large array of bound books is appealing, but particularly hard to accomplish with digital systems, though some sort of digital signage showing a sampling or overview of a collection might offer some visibility.

I've recently made the acquaintance of Bill Janssen, retired from Xerox PARC, who worked on their digital library management tools in the 1990s and aughts:

<https://www.parc.com/technical-publications/uplib-a-universa...>

Fediverse thread: <https://writing.exchange/@billjanssen/109321080797522794>

On my tablet / e-reader, I've collected a number of images of libraries, including one that seems to have roughly as many books visible as I have on my device (roughly 10,000). Just as a sort of visual contextualisation.