Libraries have existed since the most ancient times. Even the most ancient universities and gurukuls are known to have repositories of books or scriptures on various subjects. 

Before the discovery of paper, pen and printing press, books were used to be written on dried leaves-kind of things, written on by stylus dipped in some ink-like colorful liquid. 

Still there were a lot of writers and a lot more readers. Actually then there used to be less readers and more students. Today the situation is like a bit reversed. We still get more readers but the number of students is sharply declining. (Considering that erolling in a course and cramming for exams to get a written certificate of qualification is not supposed to be called “being a student”).

Libraries are usually mostly occupied by students studying their texts and consulting the references. And also a few teachers and researchers. Many used to find it convenient to use the reading rooms even though most libraries offered to take books for study at home.

But are the libraries still the same? How they have changed or how they remained the same. Let us check that. 

The greatest impact happened on libraries is perhaps with the development of internet technologies. Not only the library system, but the internet seems to be almost changing the whole book publishing and shopping industry. 

With trends of ebooks (electronic books), the print books were already getting backfoot. But one of the main problems was distribution and acquisition of pdf and other format ebooks. With the popularization of the internet, the distribution of ebooks became highly popular. Now both ebooks and print books are sold over the internet. 

Once buying and acquisition of books were also used to be a big problem. Many students and teachers used to hover through all the local bookstores for their titles. Ultimately in many cases the libraries were used to be places where they can find their titles. This made libraries even more sought after by students and teachers. 

This problem has been solved now by online book marts like Amazon and others. Now we can buy our required titles sitting right at our home. People now travel to libraries only when they cannot or need not afford to buy the books. 

Thus ebooks and the internet changed the whole of the book printing, buying and reading industry which affected the library culture to a new dimension. Now the question of existence of libraries can be arising but there are still enough reasons for their existence but in a changed format. 

Majority of the books are converted into pdf and also almost all the paper editions are available on the online book store. Still the libraries survived all these developments. But why?

There are more than one reasons which are working to make libraries survive in this age of internet and online book shopping. One of the most important reasons is the journals and periodicals. 

Journals and periodicals are such publications which are usually out of individual buying capacity. Only institutions and organizations can afford to buy them in most usual cases. Institutional libraries and many public libraries subscribe to many costly journals and periodicals which are then read and referred by the readers. But it is not that this issue has not undergone any change due to the advent of computer and internet technologies. We will discuss the changes later in this article. 

Another issue that can make libraries survive for long duration is the cost of books. Though all the books are available in online shopping still their prices can often hinder one to buy them. I have seen many students unable to buy books and depend on libraries for studies. 

Moreover, most of the reference books are extremely costly and often required for just a short duration of time. Thus incurring such a high cost of the total book for just a few pages of studies or referencing often carries no justification even if the buying is monetarily possible. In such cases libraries still remain the best alternative. 

There are many rare books or out of print books that cannot be bought from the online or offline market at the exchange of even a very high cost. But higher study students and researchers often need those kinds of books. Good libraries usually keep a good collection of ancient and other rare books which are no longer available anywhere in the stores, online or offline.

So these were some of the great reasons for the relevancy and resulting survival of libraries. Still libraries do not remain the same as before. There are many changes with the development of technology. 

So far we know that there are changes and still the libraries survive. Let us see some of the major changes and how they affected the studies of the readers. 

The first impact of computerization as I used to see was digital cataloging. Previously there used to be card catalogs. They were arranged in dictionary order, still quite hard and slow to find the desired title. After computerization of catalog, searching and finding any book based on subject, title or author became easy and lightning fast.

Though every school and college did not adopt computers in their library mainly due to cost restrictions, still many gradually shifted to computers. Colleges and university libraries were more quickly transformed due their specialized requirements. 

The maximum changes happened with the development of the internet and digital ebooks. With the increasing popularity of online shopping, education, and everything else, there has been a constant need for online libraries. At first there were a few websites that used to run online libraries in exchange of a fee under the name of subscription. 

Slowly every premium college and school started to convert their libraries into digital libraries. Students started to search and access books through the internet by signing in their profiles.