This week I read some articles about declutering and I noticed how many books I have in my room. The fact is that I’m probably never going to read them again. What should I do with them? Some of them are old, from the time I was a freshman at the university. Nobody wants to read them anymore! What do I do with all this paper?

I was thinking about e-books and how they will help us to preserve the nature and space in our houses. And then I started to think about the future of libraries. How are the libraries of the future going to be? Do they still need to buy piles of books for the students? Then, I remembered that the newest kindle costs only US$ 139. How much do you think similar devices are going to cost in 2-5 years?

How many Kindles do you think can be put in a cabinet? I don’t know, maybe 300? And now comes another fact, kindle books cost on average US$ 10 less than the printed versions. This way, if you buy fourteen books, you already have paid for your Kindle. How many books do you think a library buys per year?

With all this in mind, I envisioned a library in which e-readers are lent instead of books. In this scenario, two things would be possible. In the worst case, students would have access to books via the campus wifi network. In the best case, all books from the library would be contained in the e-reader. Instead of getting one or two books, the whole library would be lent to students! Wouldn’t that be great?

The most amazing fact about all these thoughts I had yesterday is that they are perfectly possible, TODAY, even in a country like Brazil. Even here in my city (which is not that big), they have built a huge library. What if all that money was spent on e-readers and e-books? How much money and energy and trees would be saved?

This is surely the future I want to see coming true.