SAN ANTONIO – A group of computer science students from Texas A&M San Antonio came up with a concept to add voice command services at the San Antonio Public Library.
"One of the principles for a lot of our work here at the library is reducing barriers to access, and sometimes that access is to the collection," said Adam Spana, coordinator for digital services for the San Antonio Public Library, said. "And in this case, the access is to account information, especially for people with disabilities. How can we connect people to their account information that might have a hard time of it by going through our website? So, the obvious challenge, of course, was doing it through a voice assistant like Google or Siri or Alexa."
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The app is part of the Civtech SA program, a partnership with San Antonio's Office of Innovation and Geekdom, a co-working space.
"They are getting real world experiences and being able to work on case studies with public partners and stake holders," Geekdom program manager Pebbles Le said.
The app will also track user activity, which is information the library can use to enhance their services.