Nation’s first all-digital, bookless library opens in Texas

By Mike Flacy September 15, 2013

bookless all digital library opens in texas bibliotech concept — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Opening yesterday in San Antonio, Texas, the Bexar County digital library called BiblioTech is the first library in the United States that only provides digital copies of books to patrons rather than stocking paper copies as well. Using a store design that’s a combination of a trendy Internet cafe and an Apple store, the public is free to browse the catalog of e-books on one of the large touchscreen tables and download a copy onto their personal e-reader like an Amazon Kindle. In addition, any resident of Bexar County can check out one of the 600 e-readers on hand and take it home to read books checked out at the library.

Regarding other technology within the location, the all-digital library is stocked 48 iMac computer stations, 10 Macbook laptops and 40 iPads for use within the library. The library plans to hold special events like computer learning classes in order to educate the public on e-readers and other new technology.

digital-library — Image used with permission by copyright holder

The library is also attempting to cater to children in the area with 200 additional e-readers formatted with special kid’s content as well as a regular story time hour and a Xbox 360 gaming system hooked up to a large HDTV.

In order to check out books from BiblioTech, Bexar County residents can access the digital catalog online on their mobile device after downloading the 3M Cloud Library app. That mobile app allows the resident to link their library card to the BiblioTech system. After selecting an available book to check out through the application, that book will be listed in the “My Books” section of the app along with a countdown of how many days the book is accessible. At launch, BiblioTech is making 10,000 titles available to the public in digital e-book form and those books can be checked out for two weeks at a time.

Topics

Contributing Editor

By day, I'm the content and social media manager for High-Def Digest, Steve's Digicams and The CheckOut on Ben's Bargains…

News

Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards

Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Entertainment

AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying

Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."

Mobile

4 simple pieces of tech that helped me run my first marathon

Garmin Forerunner 955 Solar displaying pace information.

The fitness world is littered with opportunities to buy tech aimed at enhancing your physical performance. No matter your sport of choice or personal goals, there's a deep rabbit hole you can go down. It'll cost plenty of money, but the gains can be marginal -- and can honestly just be a distraction from what you should actually be focused on. Running is certainly susceptible to this.

A few months ago, I ran my first-ever marathon. It was an incredible accomplishment I had no idea I'd ever be able to reach, and it's now going to be the first of many I run in my lifetime. And despite my deep-rooted history in tech, and the endless opportunities for being baited into gearing myself up with every last product to help me get through the marathon, I went with a rather simple approach.