The far north of Canada, land of the midnight sun and the polar night, has one of the most concentrated populations of native peoples in the Americas. About eighty percent of residents of Nunavut, the province in Canada’s far northeast that includes Baffin and Ellesmere Islands, claim Inuit ancestry. And these native communities, known collectively in Canada as the “First Nations,” are home to an incredible degree of linguistic diversity, with six generally accepted ways of writing the Inuit languages. One of these languages and its script, known as Inuktitut, is enabling the creation of a new digital library for Inuit early childhood education. [Read more…]
Florida Polytechnic University features a bookless library
The newest public university in Florida is trying something a little different with its 11,000 square-foot structure – going totally green. Florida Polytechnic University, located in Lakeland is taking a bold step by offering a digital catalog of 135,000 ebooks. Paper books will not be offered at the fully digital library. [Read more…]
Court rules in favor of searchable database of scanned books
It’s every college student’s dream: to be able to use the ‘find function’ so often utilized on computers to pull out bits of text from an actual printed book. While that isn’t exactly what the HathiTrust Digital Library has done, it’s pretty darn close. Basically, since 2008, the project has involved scanning over 10 million books and assorted works into an online database. These books come from a number of library organizations and universities, 80 in fact, and are voluntarily given to the project’s team temporarily for scanning. [Read more…]
San Antonio embraces a library without paper books
When most people go into the library they search through thousands of different books until they find the exact one that they want to check out and take home. Things are now changing for a library in San Antonio, as they are embracing the future and looking to ebooks instead of physical books. This library is the Bexar County Digital Library located in San Antonio, Texas. When guests walk into this library they will not be greeted by shelves upon shelves of classic and new novels, they will just see many computer screens lined up next to each other. [Read more…]
Is San Antonio’s bookless library the future of libraries?
The first completely bookless library has opened their doors to the public in San Antonio, TX. Bexar County Digital Library prides itself at the “country’s first digital public library”. For people who consider a book to be words that are printed on paper and are bound together this news might be a bit confusing. However, for people who understand that a book can be available in a digital format the new library will make perfect sense. In fact, the new library boasts over 10,000 ebook titles. All of these ebooks are able to be accessed from the library’s 4 touchscreen tablets, 40 iPads, 57 computers and 900 ereaders. [Read more…]