BiblioTech | |
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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 on 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 |
---|---|---|
3M Cloud Library | 3M | Library card |
Heritage Quest | Cambridge Information Group | |
Hoopla | Midwest Tape LLC | |
Learning Express Library | LearningExpress, LLC | |
LinkedIn Learning | from LinkedIn [13] | |
Mango | Creative Empire, LLC [14] | |
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. [15]
San Antonio, officially the City of San Antonio, is a city in and the county seat of Bexar County, Texas, United States. The city is the seventh-most populous in the United States, the second-largest in the Southern United States, and the second-most populous in Texas after Houston. It is the 17th-most populous city in North America, with 1,434,625 residents as of 2020.
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Adina Emilia De Zavala was an American teacher, historian and preservationist of Texas history. Her efforts led to saving the Alamo Long Barrack Fortress for future generations. She was born to Augustine De Zavala, son of Lorenzo de Zavala, the first Vice President of the Republic of Texas. Adina's mother Julia Tyrrell De Zavala was born in Ireland. In 1994, Recorded Texas Historic Landmark Marker number 86 was placed at Alamo Plaza to honor De Zavala. In 2008, Texas Historical marker number 15124 was placed in St. Mary's Cemetery to honor De Zavala's contributions to Texas.
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Acequia Madre de Valero is an 18th-century agricultural irrigation canal built by the Spanish and located in the Bexar County city of San Antonio in the U.S. state of Texas. When Martín de Alarcón founded San Antonio for Spain by establishing San Antonio de Valero Mission in 1718, Franciscan priest Antonio de Olivares and the Payaya and Pastia peoples, dug Acequia Madre de Valero by hand. It was vital to the missions to be able to divert and control water from the San Antonio River, in order to grow crops and to supply water to the people in the area. This particular acequia was the beginning of a much wider irrigation system. Acequia Madre de Valero ran from the area currently known as Brackenridge Park southward to what is now Hemisfair and South Alamo Street. Part of it that is not viewable by the public runs beneath the Menger Hotel. The acequia was restored in 1968 and that same year was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.
BiblioTech may refer to libraries in countries or municipalities with Latin or Spanish-speaking populations:
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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