First US Public Library With No Paper Books Opens In Texas 212
cold fjord writes "Bexar Country in Texas has opened a new $2.3 million library called BiblioTech. It doesn't have physical books, only computers and e-reader tablets. It is the first bookless public library system in the U.S. The library opened in an area without nearby bookstores, and is receiving considerable attention. It has drawn visitors from around the U.S. and overseas that are studying the concept for their own use. It appears that the library will have more than 100,000 visitors by year's end. Going without physical books has been cost effective from an architecture standpoint, since the building doesn't have to support the weight of books and bookshelves. A new, smaller library in a nearby town cost $1 million more than Bexar Country's new library. So far there doesn't appear to be a problem with returning checked out e-readers. A new state law in Texas defines the failure to return library books as theft."
10,000 books? (Score:4, Informative)
10,000 books? WTF? Even if they're sloggy PDF files at 5 megs each, that's only 50GB of books. You could fit that on a USB Key. I have 60,000 books on a drive. They're assembled as a collection in Calibre, and then indexed in Dropout. I can get any piece of data I want from them. My Personal Portable Library five times larger and thousands of times more useful than BiblioTech. What a pathetic piece of crap.
There are plenty of online book sharing sites with millions of books available. For Free. Assemble your library NOW before the authorities shut it all down by force, or the neoliberal fuquads running the tech companies make it impossible by altering the direction of technology (dumb datapads hooked to private clouds is the first step...)
Re:Why bother (Score:5, Informative)
The computers at libraries such as this one seem to be quite a useful public service. Every time I go to my local public library, the computers are mostly all in use. They provide Internet access for people who can't afford it themselves, notably people who are out of a job and need to fill out a job application online, as is now commonly required.
Subscriptions that don't cover remote access (Score:4, Informative)
If I wanted to read the Internet, I could stay home.
And lose access to the paywalled resources to which your library subscribes for use within its facilities.