The changing concept of a book

I was watching a re-run episode of the CBS news magazine,  60 Minutes, today. Thefirst story was a fascinating look into The Vatican's library, founded when Europe was coming out of the dark ages. Its holdings go back 2,000 years and contain works on math, cookbooks, and even love letters from Henry VIII to Ann Boleyn. The library is not accessible to the general public and the only person allowed to check out books is the Pope himself. Many of the books were written by hand of parchment, or treated animal skin. 

In stark contrast, today I  also read this story regarding the battle between publishers and libraries over e-books. In the ever changing landscape of book publishing, many publishers are finding it not in their best interest in giving libraries unlimited access to e-books based. For example, HarperCollins  enacted a policy of after 26 loans of an e-book, libraries must purchase another license to be able to continue to offer the book to patrons. Now, I'm not sure how they came up with that number 26, but its strange rule nonetheless.

But the two stories show how far books have come in serving as a medium to share and expand knowledge. Looking 1000 years in the future, it will be interesting to see if libraries and books will exist only in the electronic sense.