Bibliotech: the 21st Century all digital library

San Antonio’s all-digital BiblioTech library, one of America’s first all-digital libraries, opened its doors in September last year and is run by the local County. The project itself is the brainchild of Judge Nelson Wolff of Bexar County, an avid book collector who was inspired by the increasing digitalization of the New York Public Library and by Walter Isaacson’s biography of the founder of Apple, Steve Jobs.
The main branch is in a low-income district about seven miles from the county courthouse in a building with a tax assessor, a constable’s office and a justice of the peace.

“Inside, BiblioTech resembles a computer lab on a college campus. Visitors find two long rows of 48 iMacs, an “iPad bar” with a dozen iPads and a circulation desk. A door leads into a dimmer room with two Xbox 360s with Kinect and four Microsoft Surface touch-screen video tables with interactive Kaplan educational games. A tiny cafe sells coffee, thumb drives and headphones, while a space in the back is furnished with bright benches for patrons who bring their own devices. Those without can check out one of BiblioTech’s 10 Macbook Pros or 40 iPads by the hour for use in the library. Not a printed page in the form of a book can be found.” Reports Publishing Perspectivess’ Ed Nawotka, who actually went there to see it for himself.
“The library has 600 ereaders for home use. Patrons can check out up to five ebooks, choosing from 18,000 titles (more than a thousand of which are in Spanish) on their personal ereaders or on one borrowed from the library. The checkout period is two weeks, after which a book simply disappears from the device. Children up to 12 years old are offered a Nook tablet preloaded with hundreds of children’s titles.
“We’ve yet to lose a device in the four months since we’ve been open,” the head librarian, Ashley Eklof, says.
But is a library without books a library at all?
“We have maintained from the beginning that we are a digital library, not a bookless library,” says Ms. Eklof, Books or no books, she said, the goal is the same: to give residents access to information and research assistance.
It is also economical. At a cost of $2.2 million to build, stock and staff, BiblioTech is a bargain compared with the downtown library being built in nearby Austin, which has a budget of more than $100 million. BiblioTech’s yearly operating costs are budgeted at $1.1 million. “Getting it going cost us a third less than the $3.7 million Bexar County contributes annually to the San Antonio public library system, which has 26 libraries,” Ms. Cole says.
With a population of 1.7 million, Bexar County “is growing at the fringes, which leaves residents farther and farther away from existing libraries,” she said. “BiblioTech’s platform allows us to reach those people.”
The county plans to extend BiblioTech’s reach to “where the people are”: shopping districts, transit stations and large businesses.
Rackspace, a cloud computing company with 5,000 employees, has enquired about getting a BiblioTech kiosk, as have several local schools.
BiblioTech: A few additional facts.
* Ebook management services and e-readers for BiblioTech are provided by 3M. The library owns about 85% of their titles, says head librarian Eklof.
* The replacement period for the computer, e-readers and other technology is a period of three years.
* A private donation from the San Antonio Spurs NBA franchise supported the creation of the children’s section of the library.
* The staff of BilioTech is 15, with 3 full-time and 12 part-timers; most appear to be recent college graduates under the age of 25.

A visit to Bibliotech the 21st Century All Digital Library, Ed Nawotka, Jan 22, 2014