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4/22/2015 |
Member News |
Bexar BiblioTech: The Evolution of the Country's First All-digital Public Library |
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Forward
In this small, compact book I take you on a 20-year journey from my involvement in the building of a 240,000-square-foot public central library that opened in 1995 to the creation of a 4,000-square-foot digital public library in 2013 and its aftermath. It is a fast paced journey, much like the speed of the mobile digital revolution. In its wake, BiblioTech would become the nation's first all digital public library, opening in September of 2013.
The rapid advances in technology continue to challenge private business as well as the public sector. I have spent about half of my adult life in entrepreneurial pursuits and half in the public sector.
At the age of 21 in 1961, along with my father and two brothers, George and Gary, we started Alamo Enterprises, a building material store that grew to nine locations throughout South Texas. We sold it to a national chain in 1977 at a time when technology was in diapers. In 1979 my two brothers and our friends, Don and Ron Hermann, started a natural foods supermarket that grew to nine stores and sold it in 1999. There must be something magical about nine. By 1999 technology had progressed in quantum leaps, but still had not reached the mobile stage.
Over my years in public service, I have seen the public sector progress with the technology age but not respond as effectively as the private sector. There is something very comfortable about tax dollars instead of having to create profits to survive.
In my some 13 years as County Judge (County Judge is the chief executive officer of the county and chair of the Commissioners Court) we have worked hard to move Bexar County into the digital age.
The mobile digital revolution took off in 2007 ·with the advent of Apple's iPhone and Amazon's Kindle e-book reader, leading to an upheaval of how we all interact through the Internet. By 2012 e-books were everywhere. We had to run fast to catch up with the mobile digital revolution, and I believe we have done that with BiblioTech.
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