To be clear, by book-less I mean an absence of printed books, a completely digital library.
The unlikely visionary in San Antonio was Nelson Wolff, the top county official, who in Texas is known as the county judge.
“It all started with my reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs,” said Wolff, who is in his 70s and was taken with the speed of technology developed by the late co-founder of Apple Inc. as he introduced a succession of products.
So, within about a year, Wolff raised the radical idea of a no-books library in a poor part of San Antonio with limited Internet service, used available space in a county-owned building and had it operating by last September.
This is not the same as an internet cafe, a room filled with computers for general use. There actually is a library of eBooks for loan to library patrons.
“We’ve had a 100 percent return rate,” said Laura Jesse, Bexar County’s public information officer.
Downloaded e-books simply disappear from devices after two weeks, so there are no library late fees.
Heh. I wonder if they will add other media, such as newspapers, magazines, and music. That could be disruptive.
[Via CultOfMac]
In my mind this is further evidence of the absurdity of wasting tax money on the antiquated library system as an institution.
People still need libraries. This was an alternative devised within a state that values people very little.
Is this really news? I’ve been able to check out ebooks for years from my local library.
Is this really news? I’ve been able to check out ebooks for years from my local library.
Disagree.
To paraphrase something I wrote last week about the NYPL:
Perhaps libraries made sense in the early twentieth-century when they provided books on loan to poor and middle-class folks to whom hardcover-bound books were unaffordable luxuries. But as soon as paperbacks made books affordable to the mass-public, this rationale started to strain.
So libraries expanded their mission to include cultural materials and began lending out other resources- newspapers, vinyl records, VHS cassettes, music CDs and DVD movies- all arguably outside the narrow scope of providing the general public with access to educational materials. IMO it was gross mismanagement of public resources for NY Public Library to compete with Blockbuster and Tower Records to subsidize peoples access to entertainment.
In the internet age, there is no reason why we ought to perpetuate this institution, the vast real estate they occupy, the rents and employee salaries, etc. It would be cheaper for the city to subsidize a Kindle for each citizen and let them purchase ebooks, magazines, music and movies for a couple of dollars which is easily affordable to all except for a very small minority, and would give them access to thousands of free classic books that are already in the public domain.
My friends, it’s time we ended the NY Public Library system.
Tell that to the folks who can neither afford computers or bandwidth, but are constantly told that they can only apply for jobs online.
Libraries are doing what they can to fend off attacks from solipsist libertarians who would privatize everything if they could.
Just because you don’t use libraries doesn’t mean they aren’t needed by millions of people.
Wow, computers are so hard to come by these days! Only rich people and solipsistic libertarians (or do I repeat myself?) can afford them! Nobody has a friend who would let them use their computer for an hour or so! Therefore we must spend billions on erecting in some cases, gargantuan tombs of musty books so that people who want entertainment but want others to pay for it can be serviced in a free-lunch kinda-way. Heavens to betsy could we ever conceive going back to the private library system where people paid some minimal membership fee!
Computers can in fact be very difficult for people to come buy who have little to no money. For those who can possibly have access to computers, they are often very old and sometimes almost useless. Not to mention without experience using a computer they may not be very adept in using it. At a library, such as this one, there are people on hand to help. Books equal reading which assists in education. Education that may not be found otherwise.