Image of the BBC News World Service page for The Forum programme. Photo: An artist's impression of a digital book. Credit: Alengo/Getty Images, overlaid with a button reading Listen now. Title of episode is Libraries in the Digital Age.
Text reads: What is the purpose of libraries in the era of the internet and AI? Whether at a school or in a community, libraries used to be key providers of information and enjoyment for many. But now, in a digital age, more books and periodicals are available online than even the biggest library can hold. If terabytes of text can now be stored on a single laptop, do we need to think differently about the way we access and navigate books? Could well-designed AI tools be trusted to make sense of this information abundance in a similar way that a good librarian can?