This year, Cushing Academy switched from a tradition library filled with tangible books to a room dominated with Kindle’s and flat screen TVs. The New England boarding school is leading the movement of school libraries into the digital age. This transition is raising the question: are traditional libraries soon going to be history?

The school has now turned their library into a coffee bar and books are now "loaned" by transferring eBooks off a computer to a Kindle. Kindles cost around $260, but compared to a $30 hard covered book, this will eventually save the school money. However, much controversy surrounds this change.

“To me, the feeling of holding a book and being able to flip a page is a much better feeling than a digital screen,” librarian Mary Peters said.

At Cushing Academy, an average of 30 books, or .15% of the libraries holdings are checked out each day compared to the 150 books, or .95% that are checked out on average at LHS. However, with the Kindle, Cushing’s library has grown from 20,000 books to millions. The LHS library currently holds 15, 777 books.

Jim Tracy, the Headmaster of Cushing, says that the change will cause more students to check out books, thus, read more.

“I don’t think that having Kindles would cause more students to read or use the library. I think that the same amount of students would be checking out books even if we did have a digital library,” Peters said.

As expensive as Kindles are at the moment, the digital change from hard-cover books to eBooks does not look like it will happen soon.

“It would be an expensive change just because to be able to afford Kindles and up keeping on them would probably be too much for a public school to handle,” Peters said.

However, Peters thinks the change would be good think for some students.

“For some students, I think a digital library would be a good thing. It really depends on the person and how they want to check out books and their feelings about holding a book in their hands. If it wasn’t so straining financially, I wouldn’t oppose having a digital library. However at LHS, I can not see the change taking place in the near future,” Peters said.