摘要：The present article uses the term "minimal" to refer not to small libraries, but to those that are used by readers for purposes so different from those intended that their status as libraries can be called into question. The author addresses the evolving definition of libraries. Are there limits beyond which the service can no longer really be described as a library? Has there been a gradual, almost imperceptible, shift, so that what we are used to calling libraries have in fact become other services? Perhaps. And if so, should we be worried about it?
