I used to think the library's utility was on an exponential decay, thanks to the internet. Now, SEO spam has convinced me it's actually a bathtub curve, and is

I used to think the library's utility was on an exponential decay, thanks to the internet. Now, SEO spam has convinced me it's actually a bathtub curve, and is rapidly shooting back up. This makes sense, historically. I'm sure there was a time when literally anything that had been printed on a printing press was worth reading. I witnessed the time when anything that had been stored on a CD-ROM was worth reading, since generating CD-ROM worth of data, then producing them was ridiculously expensive (that time period lasted about 1-2 years). Anyway, early internet, it was hard to publish stuff. As of this year, it's less expensive to write and publish stuff than it is to read it, so curated repositories that are hardened against spam are going to be important again.