A quick visit to my local library on the same day that I'd spent a couple of hours browsing in a nearby Chapters store got me to thinking about the about what might happen to one of the cornerstones of democracy in the 21st century.

Chapters, the line of lux-looking, big-box bookstores dominating the words-and-letters biz in Canada these days, has taken over many of the things we've counted on in the past from public libraries. Chapters stores display the architecture, lighting and space we desire, and sometimes get in places like the downtown Toronto reference library or the main branch in Vancouver.

And you don't actually have to purchase anything to enjoy the amenities in Chapters. Three stories high, vast in size, Chapters stores allow for hours of browsing, and provide plenty of chairs for comfortable reading. They've also taken over some of the social and educational aspects of the public library: author readings, lectures and musical events. Some days I depart from Chapters after an hour browsing for books, and an extra half-hour flipping pages with the other mooches in the magazine racks, wondering how the company even makes any money on the retail side.

Yet I leave my library scratching my head, too, wondering if it's still providing the most valuable service it could. The stacks smell dusty and mouldy, the books on display seem ancient and yellowed, I have to reserve and wait weeks or months for current releases, and it's really hard to get help with the computerized information within the system. There's been a lot of publicity lately about how libraries are getting hip to technology to provide service to people who can't afford 'Net access of their own. And some branches are letting people bring in coffee and muffins to make them feel more at home (or more at Chapters). Yet it feels - and smells - like stale brew.

But this surface comparison of Chapters vs the Local Library is only the tip of the iceberg. There are some profound changes happening in the information era that could further diminish the value of the "lending library."

The fundamental principle of the public library is that it provides a wide-range of information, free to all users. It's an essential element of any modern-day democracy.

The focus of the library business began with books, magazines and newspapers. About 15 years ago, libraries started adding video and music to the catalogues. Then we began to see more computer terminals pop up in public libraries, not just to search internal databases but to provide some Internet access to those who weren't online at home or at work.

But was this just superficial change, no more innovative or lasting than the Bookmobile of the '60s?

The latest Statistics Canada numbers indicate that library book reading is down by five percentage points in the past five years. The borrowing of audio-visual materials has dropped nine percentage points. Stats Can suggests this doesn't necessarily mean that reading and literacy is dropping in Canada. Instead, it suggests that electronic transmission of information, such as this column you're reading now, is part of a "transformation of the reading medium."

But the Internet is just one more layer of that iceberg, still quite close to the surface. Deeper down is the huge bulk of electronic data, the most valuable and crucial to the new information economy. It's not based on the Internet but available only through private subscription or private purchase.

For instance, Thomson Newspapers, which owns The Globe and Mail, announced last month that it is selling all its other newspapers to concentrate on its more lucrative data information services. One small part of that data packet is The Globe & Mail archive - as with most newspapers, you can only access the past week of stories free on the 'Net, and have to subscribe to get earlier stories through a subsidiary called Infoglobe.

But Thomson also owns hundreds of other databases, most of them professionally-oriented. The same with Southam, and just about any other major publishing company these days.

Lawyers, bankers, investors, analysts, doctors, medical researchers - just about anyone working at a high professional level - subscribes to some private information service. Oftentimes, provided by Thomson or Southam or some other global player. Increasingly, graduate students across Canada are having to resort to such subscriptions for critical information, because it's just too specialized or expensive for their university libraries to provide.

And in fact, even I'm doing it. The 10-page Statistics Canada report I'm quoting from (Quarterly Bulletin from the Culture Statistics Program) cost $9, ordered off the 'Net and delivered to my mailbox. It was just too specialized a document for my local library to carry. Stats Can has ambitious plans to expand this side of its business, and you're likely to see less and less of its information float freely into the public domain.

Librarians are one of the most highly-educated professional groups in our society. They are not unaware of these problems, as information becomes a less free-flowing commodity. Librarians have been organizing conferences to discuss the dilemma of how to provide data from the private information industry in a library environment. But, with declining government funding for libraries, they haven't got the money to implement any solutions they've found … and the owners of these vast databases aren't too keen to help them out.

As of four years ago, 93 per cent of Canadian libraries were at least hooked up to the Internet. But in most cases this was a bare-minimum fulfillment of their obligation. The library duty terminals are slow, the bandwidth is narrow, and few libraries have the software they need. There's little technical support for the librarians themselves, let alone the public users.

The next shift the libraries need to make - helping Canadians access private databases, keeping the global information highway flowing freely - is going to be even more difficult to achieve without hardware, software, bandwidth and lots more bucks. That will take a massive public interest in the issue, plus government coordination on the major issues to be solved, and increased funding on the federal level.

Meanwhile, the federal government has been holding hearings into Chapters domination of the Canadian book distribution and sales business. But these hearings are just looking at the tip of the iceberg. And by the time they deliver a report to Parliament, the chain could be in the hands of some multinational interest. The Chapters phenomenon - which obviously appeals to a wide range of Canadian book lovers - is just the initial, storefront evidence of greater changes to come in the information society. The great repositories of information are shifting from the public domain to the private. Chapters just happens to provide a few chairs and let us browse in their space.