I agree that there will be an increased focus in libraries on digital media, but not in the way you describe. As you said the two primary goals of a library or content provision and education. Where these two meet is in online databases, the best of which are still subscription-based at this time. The libraries can get educational and/or government discounts for these subscriptions, and provide their patrons both with access to these databases and training and advice regarding how best to use them. Hell, I graduated high school thanks to friendly librarians, boolean logic, ProQuest? searches, and reams of free dot-matrix printouts.

Other than that, I agree with your assessment. The only other thing that libraries have which the internet does not are access to old, rare, and/or out-of-print books. In the next few years services like Google Books will slowly reduce this advantage until it is essentially nil, save perhaps for truly eccentric or rare texts.

-- JohnPowerHely - 10 Dec 2008