The future library is the brainchild of Bexar County (TX, San Antonio area) Judge Nelson Wolff who got the idea while while reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs.
“It’s not a replacement for the (city) library system, it’s an enhancement,” says Wolff who also happens to be a book collector. The library hopes to secure at least $250,000 to acquire the first 10,000 titles. There will also be 100 e-readers available for checkout.
“We wanted to find a low-cost, effective way to bring reading and learning to the county and also focus on the change in the world of technology…It will help people learn,” said Wolff.
artist’s conception of how it might look
artist’s conception of how it might look in 1981
this looks like EPCOT. and where is the PORN on the monitors? and where is the room for the giant duffle bags that most of our patrons have with them? and where can they put their bottles of water or coffee cups? and how does a 300 lb person sit on that stool? or stay on and not fall off? and how do you get a wheelchair between those rows? and who is it who told them that they can buy ebooks for the library for $25??? more like $80 – $125.
this is not a library concept designed around people, unless those people are content to stare at a screen displaying the cover of Dianetics.
The first?
I know of at least one community college library that has been without books for 3 years.
Idiot!
Non-librarians have all the right ideas. It is all on the Internet! It is all free! It is all findable! Interlibrary loan and reading books more than five years old is silly, and no one does that! Copyright doesn’t exist! Children prefer to gnaw on computer screens instead of board books! We don’t need no stinkin’ librarians! It’s all so simple! It’s all so cheap!
So, let’s apply this adolsecent reasoning to the judge. We don’t need no stinkin’ judges! Anyone can determine right from wrong, so let’s have unpaid volunteers hear cases and impose sentences! It’s all so simple! It’s all so free! Throw people who offend us into the slammer, and have the prisons made like they were in 1776! Rights? Who needs any stinkin’ rights! Any citizen knows what is right and wrong, and can be an effective judge. We don’t need law school, because all cases are basically simple and can be decided in one afternoon. After all, if it was OK with Texas Judge Roy Bean at the turn of the century, , it is OK today! Let’s fire all the judges, and save us some tax money! And fire all the lawyers as well. If you can’t plead your own case, you’re probably guilty anyway.
Does that come with fries?
Turn down the lights, get rid of all the clutter on the desks, tune the wall screens to football, however, and you have a bar.
NPR
NPR story about this:
http://www.npr.org/2013/01/15/169412670/a-new-chapter-a-launch-of-the-bookless-library
Pricing…
Yeah, I don’t buy the pricing. Unless they’re doing Gutenburg, then they’re paying way too much.
I thought all eBooks were against library subscriptions (well, minus Baen), and want them to buy new ones after some retardedly small use (like 20 checkouts?) – based on the attrition that a physical book might get. (Yeah, and that’s why we’re not buying a physical book, dummies…)
It might be nice to see someone pimping all the free books available to libraries, and then see the libraries shoveling them out to the patrons… But I’ve not seen a report of that (although, I’m sure somewhere, someone is doing it…)
~ender, Duke_of_URL