Try to initiate a rational discussion on the future of libraries and you'd better have thick skin.

It's a lesson Encinitas Mayor James Bond is learning after publicly questioning the wisdom of his city spending $20 million on its new library.

Comments appended to our article about Bond's comments make it sound as if he's advocating the burning of books or trying to personally destroy the ancient library at Alexandria, scroll by scroll.

But in reading the article it becomes clear that Bond wasn't questioning the propriety of providing access to information for the local community, only whether a library should continue to be viewed as a place rather than a service.

It seems to me that what Bond was driving at is that a library's core function isn't as physical repository -- it is as provider and protector of information.

And that that role is changing. Rapidly.

Nobody is more tied to physical forms of information storage than I am -- how many of you reading this still collect reel-to-reel tapes? And have a tape deck on which to listen to them?

But that isn't the future. My teens don't even buy CDs anymore (and don't get them started on my 1,500 LP collection) -- they buy the songs they want online and download them to their computers and iPods.

The question of the future of libraries isn't so different from the difficult questions newspapers such as this one are facing.

And in each case, I'd argue that the physical form is the least important aspect.

In fact, many of you reading this column will be doing so online. If you're reading it Wednesday evening, in fact, I know you're reading it online because it won't be in print until Thursday.

So what a newspaper provides isn't a product but a service -- we don't sell a paper, we gather information so you don't have to, and then present it to you (and in the case of an opinion column, we provide a bit of entertainment -- hopefully). The paper it is printed on is the delivery system, not the end product.

So it is with libraries. What defines a good library isn't its building or stacks or landscaping: It's the information each holds.

As more and more information is conveyed by digital means rather than physical, does it make sense to continue building libraries designed to hold lots of books, microfilm and bound issues of magazines?

(Before anyone hurls the usual charges that I hate books or am opposed to education, inevitable anytime I tackle this issue, let me point out that each person making such accusations is automatically volunteering to help me and my family move next summer, as my friends who helped us move into a new house last month have already excused themselves for the next go-round due to the thousands of books, LPs, CDs and tapes that have left said friends bowed over from carrying them.)

Yes, as Bond's critics have said, libraries are here to stay. Nobody is arguing that point, least of all Mr. Bond or myself.

But it is not too soon, as some of those leaving comments on the previous article argued, to start thinking about the libraries of the future. Not by a long shot.

- Contact columnist Jim Trageser at (760) 631-6628 or jtrageser@nctimes.com.