Do School Libraries Need Books?

The NY Times is running a debate about whether school libraries need books. They say:

"Keeping traditional school libraries up to date is costly, with the constant need to acquire new books and to find space to store them. Yet for all that trouble, students roam the stacks less and less because they find it so much more efficient to work online. One school, Cushing Academy, made news last fall when it announced that it would give away most of its 20,000 books and transform its library into a digital center.
Do schools need to maintain traditional libraries? What are the educational consequences of having students read less on the printed page and more on the Web?"

Read the responses from
James Tracy, headmaster, Cushing Academy
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, English professor, University of Maryland
Liz Gray, library director, Dana Hall School
Nicholas Carr, author, “The Big Switch”
William Powers, author, “Hamlet’s BlackBerry”

here.