| BiblioTech | |
|---|---|
 BiblioTech South | |
 | |
| 29°20′39″N98°30′18″W / 29.3442°N 98.5049°W | |
| Location | Bexar County, Texas, United States |
| Type | Public library, bookless library |
| Established | September 14, 2013 |
| Other information | |
| Director | Laura Cole |
| Website | bexarbibliotech |
BiblioTech is the first all-digital public library in the United States. It serves residents of Bexar County, Texas. There are four BiblioTech branches and one satellite branch.
The first BiblioTech location opened on September 14, 2013. [1] [2] The County-operated library cost $2.3 million (USD) and is located in the underserved south side of San Antonio. [2] San Antonio is the second largest city in Texas and the seventh largest city in the U.S., but ranks 60th in literacy. [2] The library had over 400,000 visitors in its first four years. [2]
BiblioTech's second branch, BiblioTech West, opened in July 2015 on the west side of San Antonio; it also serves the residents of Bexar County. [3] A third branch, on the city's east side, opened in April 2018. [4] Their fourth branch, The Nelson and Tracy Wolff BiblioTech EDU, opened in December 2022 near downtown San Antonio and serves both residents of Bexar County as well as students on the shared campus of Fox Tech, Cast Tech and ALA. [5]
The library lends e-readers and digital content rather than physical media. [6] [7] BiblioTech lends e-readers to those with a BiblioTech card; about half of the e-readers are on loan at any given time. [2] Each e-reader can hold up to five books. Members with a library card can also download the cloudLibrary app to read eBooks from their personal device (iOS, Android, Windows). [2]
BiblioTech also offers online databases and educational resources, [8] programming, [9] and many touch-screen video tablets.
The library arranges for its patrons access to digital content from several providers. Some resources are free of charge to the library, and some require paid subscriptions. [10] [11] [12]
| Title | Producer | Access |
|---|---|---|
| CloudLibrary | OCLC. [13] | Library card |
| Heritage Quest | Cambridge Information Group | |
| Hoopla | Midwest Tape LLC | |
| Learning Express Library | LearningExpress, LLC | |
| LinkedIn Learning | from LinkedIn [14] | |
| Mango | Creative Empire, LLC [15] | |
| NewsBank | NewsBank, Inc. | |
| Newspaper Archive | Heritage Microfilm, Inc. | |
| ProQuest | Cambridge Information Group | |
| TEDtalks | Sapling Foundation | |
| TexShare Database Collection |
All-digital libraries have existed on college campuses for years, but this is the first all-digital public library. [2] The county also saved millions on some expenses, the architecture, and furniture required to store books, as well as the infrastructure to bear the weight of the books. [2] The volumes they offer cost about the same as the physical books. [2]
Some readers prefer nondigital libraries. For critic Jeff Jacoby, BiblioTech's all-digital library model lacks sensory enticements (such as shelves of books) that he believes foster serendipity in information discovery. He also notes the efficiency of printed books and appropriate delivery systems (such as Biblioburro) in some nonurban locales. [16]
Bexar County is a county in the U.S. state of Texas. It is in South Texas and its county seat is San Antonio.
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Bookless libraries are public, academic and school libraries that do not have any printed books. Instead they offer all-digital collections of literary works, reading material and scientific and academic research material. A bookless library typically uses the space that would have once been used for books to offer public computers, e-readers and other technology used to consume and produce digital media. Over the last decade, driven by changes in scholarly communication, several major research libraries have successfully become bookless.
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The University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries (UTSA Libraries) is the academic library of The University of Texas at San Antonio, a state research university in San Antonio, Texas, United States. UTSA Libraries consists of the John Peace Library (JPL) on the Main Campus, the Downtown Library, and the Applied Engineering and Technology (AET) Library. The libraries provide students and faculty with a comprehensive access to information as well as spaces for active learning, teaching, and interdisciplinary scholarship.
The Midland County Public Library system provides library services to the county of Midland, Texas, as well as the surrounding counties of Andrews, Crane, Ector, Glasscock, Howard, Martin, Reagan, and Upton. It is currently a 4 branch system consisting of the Downtown Library, the Centennial Library, the Law Library, and a Bookmobile.
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