What, then, does the library of the future look like? Maybe not as different from today as it sounds. Today’s libraries are already community spaces with rooms full of books and machines—many libraries have printers, copiers, computers, and microfiche terminals. But if the trend in American libraries is toward relative booklessness, when—and how quickly—do print volumes become searchable or downloadable only online? Perhaps the library of the future will consist of five coffee-shop-sized locations spread across a town, instead of one larger, centralized building. These physical spaces would become the main draw of a library; the books people want to check out would all be available to download from anywhere with an Internet connection.

This may be where we’re headed, but it will take time. Even at the Library of Congress, people are still designing the cataloging infrastructure for a fully digitized system—actually getting materials online is a separate and ongoing challenge. At many institutions, changes will likely depend on the actual behaviors of patrons, not just ideas about how a library should be from those who aren’t using libraries as it is. “Even though people strongly believe in the role of libraries in digital inclusion, relatively few library users actually used libraries for this purpose,” Pew wrote of its latest findings. “Just 7 percent say they had taken a class on how to use the internet or computers when asked about their use of the library in the past 12 months.”

And yet 70 percent of respondents said libraries help people learn how to use new technologies—including 31 percent who said they help “a lot” in this regard. Even in libraries where collections of printed books are being culled, at times with dramatic backlash, it’s not as though paper books will disappear overnight. Traditional publishers are still printing, on paper, some 300,000 original titles annually.

This latest Pew survey, then, seems emblematic of a broader disconnect between the way people view the written word and perceive their relationship to it. Consider the cultural space that books occupy: People collect them, tote them, start and never finish them—and sometimes don’t start them at all. People like having books around, whether in print or pixelated; it doesn’t always mean they’ll get through them.

Which mirrors how people see libraries, it seems: A library is a critical institution for the kind of community people say they want to live in, a space where those people could—theoretically, anyway—learn and gather. With or without printed books, and certainly with a smaller collection of them, a library can still be that.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.