Can we really trust e-libraries?

One thing worries me when I try to download e-books. There are usually different types and versions of the same book available, but that's exactly my issue. I had just one chapter left to read in Thinking for a Change, but I didn't have the book with me. One chapter... so I searched and downloaded the e-book. Guess what I found.

Not only did the format look different, the words were seemingly not identical to the same book I had sitting on my table at home. I couldn't understand so I discarded that ebook version and waited until I was back home. If that could happen, what about the countless ebooks out there? I wonder how different some may be from their original prints. And that exactly is my problem.

I became even more encouraged to buy the books for myself and have original copies on my shelves. But the discussion on e-libraries and physical ones isn't just about the change in texts. And I'll start with the genesis of my love for science and technology.

I'm not sure how long Wikipedia has been around, but before then there were encyclopedias. About when I was seven or eight years old, I discovered encyclopedias. How I found myself in the small library we had in school then, I don't remember. What I vividly remember was the aura I always felt reading in there.

A big, long book with a number somewhere on its cover indicating the encyclopedia belonged to a series. Curiosity had me pull it out, and then I knew time no more for hours. Even though others were there, reading their interests, it felt like being in my own world, learning about the wonders of the universe. In one of those, I learned about the Milky Way, Andromeda, and that stars are innumerable times larger than our puny Earth.

Had I not been close to the door to the library, I'd have been forgotten and locked in there, for I myself had become lost in the pages. Nevertheless, I have once been locked in a library before.

It was a fine Friday with exams past behind us and plenty of free time in our hands. There was no other place to allow my mind to wander to fascinating places like the library. 14-year-old me, seeking to travel through time and space, went to bury himself in books. By the time I came back to the present and became aware of my environment, the gates to the library had been locked hours ago.

They usually rang a bell or called out to everyone when the library was closing. Had I been sitting at a desk, I'd have been tapped by someone. But I was, however, standing between the shelves, plunged deep within the pages of the fascinating books. Nobody, even me, knew I was there. Thanks to my friends that were passing by, I eventually got out with the library prefect's keys. Else, I'd have gone three days stuck there.

It's much different now. I haven't been to a library in a long time now, but I at least know they'd still be there if and whenever I want to visit. Comparing that feeling of being with books in libraries is incomparable to having digital libraries.

If we look at things from another angle, nobody really owns anything; ownership doesn't really mean ownership in the digital world. You could buy books on Amazon and own a copy, but what's really happening is that you own a license to read an ebook. You'd have to keep up a subscription to continually gain access to your ebooks on most of these e-libraries. Should anything happen to those platforms, also, those ebooks are probably even gone.

Let's not even talk about how easy it is to alter digital books. If you can control what people read, then you can control how they think. Just imagine the government having that control. If there are no physical books anymore, they could just go in the background and change things, and no one may notice.

So the question is, do we really want these digital libraries to take over, and can that even happen