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There are tens of millions of e-book lovers, and their ranks are sure to be boosted by the latest iPad along with improved Kindles, Nooks and their rivals.

My sister, a retired fourth-grade teacher, has finally succumbed; Dorothy reads faster by enlarging the words on her tablet. And my wife favors e-books when she stretches out in bed. Clearly, the time has come for a well-stocked national digital library system, not to replace brick-and-mortar libraries but to augment them.

In the 1990s, William F. Buckley Jr. my political opposite wrote two columns supporting my basic vision. He even recommended it to Newt Gingrich. Years later, we still lack a coherent national e-library strategy. (Last week, seven patrons of the Lexington Public Library were waiting for seven copies of the e-book of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer's novel. In this case, because of legal restrictions and related technical precautions, a digital copy is just like a paper copy only one library patron may check it out at a time.)

Through greater purchasing clout, a national digital library system could give taxpayers far more for their money, adding to the inherent economies of e-books. A first step could be a foundation-financed buyout of OverDrive, the current e-book supplier for many libraries, if the owners agreed.

Frustratingly, Washington does not grasp the full potential of a national digital library system truly serving the masses. In effect, at least unofficially, President Barack Obama's administration has farmed out the issue to a group hosted at the president's old law school, the Harvard-based Digital Public Library of America initiative.

Ideally, its talented people can come up with a well-crafted online strategy to help public libraries and others encourage family literacy, mitigate the fourth-grade reading slump, distribute appropriate text and multimedia content to help upgrade our work force, and stimulate the brains of the millions of baby boomers who soon will be retiring (some, like my wife, with serious mobility limitations). Not one current school librarian or other K-12 educator sits on the 17-member steering committee.

And yet, the national digital library issue is in many ways a K-12, job- preparation and anti-poverty opportunity in disguise. Studies show a strong connection between children's academic achievement and access to books at home.

E-books are just swarms of invisible electrons, but children still could notice them. Librarians and teachers, for example, could post drawings of scenes from e-books on the walls, and they could talk up appropriate local titles mentioning people and landmarks known to the students.

And "recreational reading," whether the electronic or paper variety, could help nudge children and parents toward the more serious variety, and build skills and knowledge of many kinds. Many academics, alas, look down on popular-level books.

This is partly why we need two tightly intertwined but separate national digital library systems, ultimately one academic and one public. Both could be universally accessible to Americans and ideally others, and with plenty of shared content. Separate systems would help avoid or reduce clashes over such issues as scholarly monographs versus best-sellers.

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Commentary: A national digital library system is long overdue