Have you all seen this?
Launch of the Bookless Library
If your idea of a library is row upon row of nicely shelved hardcovers, then you’ll be in for a surprise when a planned new library in San Antonio opens this fall.
“Think of an Apple store,” Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff says while explaining the layout of the new library, BiblioTech.
In keeping with technological advances, the county will house a library of neatly arranged LCD screens and gadgets instead of the traditional banquet of dog-eared print and paper books. The public library will be one of the first digital-only libraries of its kind.
With 50 computer terminals and a stock of laptops and tablets on-site, the building will also offer an array of preloaded e-readers available for the card-carrying customer to take home.
I mean, I love the fact that people who don’t have access to computers/internet will be able to with this type of library (moreso than most libraries just in sheer computer terminal count) but I’m not a big fan of this digital only outlook.
I might be jaded, and some of it has to do with why I don’t like e-books for young children.
#1. I’m not giving Sammie a library e-reader (or even mine!) to play around with. She’s 3.5 and understands some items have to be treated nice, but still!
#2 And, we leave her library books out for her to always have access to. Her owned books are in her bedroom and the library books are in the living room (books EVERYWHERE!) and this puts reading into a category just like her toys = always accessible. She has access to our books in our bedroom too – there aren’t really any books in our house that are hands off for her. We want to raise her in a home where books are common place to foster the love of reading. We have only one working TV, but we have over 800 books in our house that she can put her hands on, turning the pages even if they don’t have pictures like hers.
#3. Part of the whole library experience for her (and hell, me too) is the whole picking books off the shelves, coloring at the little coloring table, seeing all the books (she knows the mom/dad sections of the library, she knows right where her books are), and the stuffed Clifford dog they have there (she carries it around while selecting her books). It’s not JUST about books, but an environment.
And I think e-books only takes away from that environment. So, am I just jaded? What are your thoughts on this type of library? Do you think it will catch on in the coming years?
