Amurgul bibliotecilor
The Twilight of Libraries

Summary/Abstract: Statistics show a drastic decrease, by approximately 50%, in the number of libraries in Romania between 1990 and 2023. The only category that is still holding steady is that of university libraries, while the number of school and public libraries (village, municipal, and town) is decreasing day by day. Some of the causes are: the decline in the birth rate and, implicitly, in the school-age population; the depopulation of villages and the merging of localities; the migration of readers to the online environment, where they can read digital books without needing a library; a decline in the appetite for reading books, alongside a dramatic increase in the time spent on online social networks.

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