Libraries are networks where every book is a node.

Every book, and scholarly monographs in particular, are themselves networks of relations of ideas and other texts.

So libraries are networks of networks.

The value of networks increases exponentially with the number of nodes.

The physical presence of the books and the physical performance of searches through the books and through the collections of books are all a practice of embodying knowledge. A network search through a windowed browser is a completely different embodiment, a different way of knowing.

Libraries without books deny the opportunities for building the embodied knowings.