| 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 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.
St. Mary's University is a private Roman Catholic university in San Antonio, Texas. Founded by the Society of Mary (Marianists) in 1852, St. Mary's is the oldest Catholic university in Texas and the American Southwest.
Comal County is a county located on the Edwards Plateau in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 161,501. Comal County is known for its rich German-Texan and European history. Its county seat is New Braunfels.
Nelson William Wolff is a retired American judge and Democratic politician from San Antonio, Texas. He represented Bexar County in the Texas House of Representatives from 1971 to 1973 and the Texas Senate from 1973 to 1975. He served on the San Antonio City Council from 1987 to 1991 and then as mayor of San Antonio from 1991 to 1995. He served as Bexar county judge from 2001 until December 31, 2022.
The Convention of 1832 was the first political gathering of colonists in Mexican Texas. Delegates sought reforms from the Mexican government and hoped to quell the widespread belief that settlers in Texas wished to secede from Mexico. The convention was the first in a series of unsuccessful attempts at political negotiation that eventually led to the Texas Revolution.
The San Antonio Public Library (SAPL) is the public library system serving the city of San Antonio, Texas. It consists of a central library, 29 branch libraries, and a library portal. SAPL was awarded the National Medal for Museum and Library Service in 2006.
Judson Independent School District is a public school district based in Live Oak, Texas (USA).
Texas has over 1,000 public school districts—all but one of the school districts in Texas are independent, separate from any form of municipal or county government. School districts may cross city and county boundaries. Independent school districts have the power to tax their residents and to assert eminent domain over privately owned property. The Texas Education Agency (TEA) oversees these districts, providing supplemental funding, but its jurisdiction is limited mostly to intervening in poorly performing districts.
Greater San Antonio, officially designated San Antonio–New Braunfels, is an eight-county metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Texas defined by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The metropolitan area straddles South Texas and Central Texas and is on the southwestern corner of the Texas Triangle. The official 2020 U.S. census showed the metropolitan area's population at 2,558,143—up from a reported 1,711,103 in 2000—making it the 24th largest metropolitan area in the United States. Austin–Round Rock lies about 80 mi (130 km) northeast of Greater San Antonio.
Downtown San Antonio is the central business district of San Antonio, Texas and the urban core of Greater San Antonio, a metropolitan area with nearly 2.5 million people.
The Alamo Area Library System (AALS) is one of ten public library systems in the U.S. state of Texas. It consists of 46 member libraries located in 21 counties that surround the city of San Antonio and Bexar County. The San Antonio Public Library acts as the personnel and fiscal agent for AALS and houses the system office. AALS provides consulting and continuing education service to public and school librarians that reside in the San Antonio metropolitan area.
Blue Star Contemporary is a non-profit contemporary art institution located in San Antonio, Texas. It was established by a group of artists in 1986 after the success of the Blue Star Exhibition, a show featuring the work of local contemporary artists in the former Blue Star Ice and Cold Storage warehouse. Blue Star Contemporary, also known as BSC, is run by Executive Director Mary Heathcott.
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.
The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is a US project aimed at providing public access to digital holdings in order to create a large-scale public digital library. It officially launched on April 18, 2013, after two-and-a-half years of development.
The Guenther House is a restaurant, museum and store located at 205 E. Guenther Street in the King William neighborhood of the Bexar County city of San Antonio in the U.S. state of Texas. Currently operated by C. H. Guenther and Son. Inc., the home was originally built as a private residence in 1859 by Pioneer Flour Mills founder Carl Hilmar Guenther. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places listings in Bexar County, Texas on October 11, 1990.
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.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of San Antonio, Texas, United States.
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