Some of my happiest memories of childhood are trips to the library. Every week my mom would take my sister and me to the library to check out books and to be read to by the librarian. Every child I know looked forward to being read to, then going and selecting 10 books to take home. This weekly ritual instilled in me a lifelong love of reading and learning. I still use the library weekly. I do not have a Kindle or an I Pad, and I no longer buy books. If you read a lot, buying books gets extremely expensive, so I use the Dove Library in Carlsbad almost exclusively. I put my books on hold each month, and read them as they become available. It works well for me, and I can't imagine a world without libraries. But wait! A new kind of library is here, and it may just be the library of the future. An all-digital public library opened in Bexar County Texas in mid September. Imagine, a bookless library!. The facility offers about 10,000 free e-books for the 1.7 million residents of the county, which includes San Antonio. Patrons can access free ebooks and audio books either by going to the library or using an app and downloading books from home. To read an ebook on their own device, users must have either a 3M Cloud Library app, which they can link to their library card. The idea of the bookless library is not new, but perhaps 2002 was too early for the idea to catch on. (That's when Arizona tried it). It is thought that 10-20% of the libraries could go bookless in the next decade. My library already has a huge digital presence. You can download e-books to your IPod or home computer and use them for three weeks just like a regular library book. I read that it only costs about $2.5million to open a bookless library, significantly less than a traditional library. What will this do to the book industry? It will hurt it significantly, but all technological advances have some negative unintended consequences. I love the library. I love opening a book, thumbing through the pages, touching it. It's hard to imagine a world without books, but it does seem that is the direction we're going. Some high schools are now bookless, using IPads and digital books instead. This is the future, and I'm ready, although I'm not sure it's best for society. It's definitely the most economical, and will make books available to almost everyone, even shut ins.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Libraries Are Changing
Some of my happiest memories of childhood are trips to the library. Every week my mom would take my sister and me to the library to check out books and to be read to by the librarian. Every child I know looked forward to being read to, then going and selecting 10 books to take home. This weekly ritual instilled in me a lifelong love of reading and learning. I still use the library weekly. I do not have a Kindle or an I Pad, and I no longer buy books. If you read a lot, buying books gets extremely expensive, so I use the Dove Library in Carlsbad almost exclusively. I put my books on hold each month, and read them as they become available. It works well for me, and I can't imagine a world without libraries. But wait! A new kind of library is here, and it may just be the library of the future. An all-digital public library opened in Bexar County Texas in mid September. Imagine, a bookless library!. The facility offers about 10,000 free e-books for the 1.7 million residents of the county, which includes San Antonio. Patrons can access free ebooks and audio books either by going to the library or using an app and downloading books from home. To read an ebook on their own device, users must have either a 3M Cloud Library app, which they can link to their library card. The idea of the bookless library is not new, but perhaps 2002 was too early for the idea to catch on. (That's when Arizona tried it). It is thought that 10-20% of the libraries could go bookless in the next decade. My library already has a huge digital presence. You can download e-books to your IPod or home computer and use them for three weeks just like a regular library book. I read that it only costs about $2.5million to open a bookless library, significantly less than a traditional library. What will this do to the book industry? It will hurt it significantly, but all technological advances have some negative unintended consequences. I love the library. I love opening a book, thumbing through the pages, touching it. It's hard to imagine a world without books, but it does seem that is the direction we're going. Some high schools are now bookless, using IPads and digital books instead. This is the future, and I'm ready, although I'm not sure it's best for society. It's definitely the most economical, and will make books available to almost everyone, even shut ins.
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