It took us a while to figure out the hubbub surrounding the opening of downtown San Francisco's latest mall, but then someone pointed out that the $137 million glass and concrete structure is the new library. Still, our confusion was perhaps prescient, as it turns out that the "New Main," this "Library for the 21st Century," (as it's being called) is about as reverent of the pursuit of knowledge as a Waldenbooks outlet. And, if essayist Nicholson Baker is right, it might have even fewer books. In a speech given last week, Baker asserted that City Librarian Ken Dowlin has "committed a crime against knowledge" by ridding the library of at least two hundred thousand books - a fifth of the old library's collection. Dowlin's motivation? To make room for, among other things, a "state of the art" online catalog. Some might dismiss Baker's concerns as reactionary neo-Luddism, but we feel that even the most wired among us should take note. You might even - dare we say it - take up a pen and request, under California's Public Records Act, to take a look at the old catalog yourself. The card catalog is the only complete record of what the library once contained, and with 50% of the new library's stacks closed to the public, it seems that digitized media isn't the only kind of information that wants to be free.

-Suck