Library Buildings around the World

USA
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Bookless Library, San Antonio, TX – USA 2013
San Antonio plans one of the nation's first bookless libraries
The $1.5-million San Antonio library – which will have computers, tablets, and e-readers, but no paper books – will be like 'an Apple
store.'
By Husna Haq / January 21, 2013
A rendering of the BiblioTech, one of the nation's first bookless libraries to open in San Antonio, Texas in the Fall of 2013.
Courtesy of Bexar County Government
That’s right, BiblioTech, a $1.5 million Bexar County paperless library will have scores of computer terminals, laptops, tablets, and
e-readers – but not a dog-eared classic or dusty reference book in sight.
“Think of an Apple store,” Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, who led his county’s bookless library project, told NPR when
describing the planned library.
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The 4,989-squre-foot, digital-only library, one of the first of its kind, will feature 100 e-readers available for circulation, 50 e-readers
for children, 50 computer stations, 25 laptops, and 25 tablets for on-site use. Patrons can check out e-readers for two weeks or load
books onto their own devices.
“A technological evolution is taking place,” Wolff says. “And I think we’re stepping in at the right time.”
It’s a trend that appears to be catching on. As we reported on in a July 2012 post, “Bookless Libraries – has it really come to this?,”
a number of libraries, academic and public, have joined the paperless bandwagon. It began with academic libraries, including
Kansas State University’s engineering school, the University of Texas at San Antonio, Stanford University’s engineering school,
Drexel University, and Cornell. From there it spread to public libraries, including the Balboa Branch library in Newport Beach,
California and even the New York Public Library, which doesn’t plan a bookless future but “a future with far fewer books.”
That’s a vision that makes many bibliophiles – us included – shudder.
In an interview with NPR, Sarah Houghton, director of the San Rafael Public Library in California and a proponent of digital
media, called the bookless library “premature.”
Most communities, she says, simply aren’t ready for a digital-only library. For starters, some people simply prefer reading physical
books. What’s more, not everyone is technologically literate and may need considerable help – help that would require training staff
and swelling the library budget, unlikely in today’s budget-starved environment. Finally, she adds, a lot of content simply isn’t
available for digital licensing and purchase.
“So your selection of bestsellers and popular media just went down the toilet because 99 percent of that is not available to libraries
digitally,” she says, adding that many publishers either won’t license to libraries or offer expensive or unrealistic terms.
Perhaps most importantly, as we wrote in a previous blog post on the topic, “the shrinking library deprives us of a critical ingredient
in the exploration and discovery of books: the ability to wander, browse, and stumble upon new treasures at random.”
And as bestselling author Michael Connelly told Time last year, libraries are also community gathering spaces. “The library is a
societal tent pole. There are a lot of ideas under it. Knock out the pole and the tent comes down,” he said.
Houghton’s thoughts on the future of the bookless library? “I think it’ll be a good 100 to 150 years from now until all libraries are
completely digital,” she told NPR.
We don’t know about you, but we’re breathing a collective sigh of relief.
Husna Haq is a Monitor correspondent.
(http://www.casmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2013/0121/San-Antonio-plans-one-of-the-nation-s-first-bookless-libraries)
Bexar set to turn the page on idea of books in libraries
By John W. Gonzalez
Updated 1:55 am, Friday, January 11, 2013
Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff is an unabashed book lover with 1,000 first editions in his private collection, but even he sees the
writing on the wall.
Paper books have lost their allure, and future generations may have little use for them, Wolff contends.
So when he embarked on a mission to create a countywide library system, he decided it should be bookless from the start.
Today, after months of planning, Wolff and other county leaders will announce plans to launch the nation's first bookless public
library system, BiblioTech, with a prototype location on the South Side opening in the fall.
“If you want to get an idea what it looks like, go into an Apple store,” Wolff said.
Inspired while reading Apple founder Steve Jobs' biography, Wolff said he envisions several bookless libraries around the county,
including in far-flung suburbs.
“It's not a replacement for the (city) library system, it's an enhancement,” Wolff said.
“People are always going to want books, but we won't be doing that in ours,” Wolff said.
The University of Texas at San Antonio is a pioneer among academic institutions with bookless collections and technical libraries.
Many cities, including San Antonio, offer downloadable books and other digitized information along with their paper volumes.
But no entire public library system is bookless, and unlike others, Bexar County's BiblioTech library system won't have a legacy of
paper. It'll be designed for, not adapted to, the digital age, Wolff said.
“We've called everywhere and I don't believe anybody's done this before,” he said.
Not that it hasn't been contemplated.
San Antonio is considering a bookless library for the far North Side, using funds set aside for District 9 in the 2012 bond issue.
Newport Beach, Calif., decided in 2011 to make its original library bookless, but withdrew the plans amid public outcry.
Tucson-Pima Public Library System in Arizona opened a small bookless branch in 2002 in a neighborhood where residents were
largely without computer access. But about five years ago, the system added books at the community's request, spokeswoman Kenya
Johnson said.
“They told us they wanted their own collection there, so we shifted the format and now it's a full-access library. It still has the
computers,” she said.
At UTSA, which opened one of the nation's first bookless academic libraries in 2010, officials are pleased with the outcome and
confident the concept will spread.
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