That loss may or may not be economically required -- but it's still a loss either way.
> It's always going to be cheaper for a library to lend internet/devices for reading
The economics of this may differ depending on where you are, but I'm 99% sure that this isn't the case where I am.
And I think you may be severly underestimating the cost of maintaining library-sized collections of books, in labor and utilities and maintenance and real estate. Consumer digital devices, especially things like e-ink readers, cost almost nothing compared to that.
The expense wouldn't be in the communications. It would be in replacing the broken devices. And with the program I'm familiar with, there was no communications involved anyway. You get the ebook preloaded on the device.
> I think you may be severly underestimating the cost of maintaining library-sized collections of books, in labor and utilities and maintenance and real estate.
I'm very familiar with these costs in the library system where I live, and I am privy to the figures it was looking at when developing their own ebook program.
I know they vary a lot depending on where you are, though, so it wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that there are areas where it pencils out very differently.
However, as I've said, even if the ebook program saved big money, something important is still lost without physical books.
And then there's print-on-demand. You don't need a library for that. That's awesome that you personally love reading on a physical page, but that's not a reason to warehouse hundreds of millions of physical books that get checked out once a decade.