Thousands of America’s libraries got better today with Amazon rolling out the Kindle Library Lending program to 11,000 libraries.
This means that members of several thousand of America’s county and town libraries like yours truly will be able to borrow Kindle e-books and read them either on the Kindle e-reader or on competing devices like iPad, iPhone and PC that have the Kindle application installed.
The only drawback we see here is that borrowers will also be asked to sign up for an Amazon account, a cheap way for the company to get hold of customers’ information.
Here’s a relevant excerpt from the Amazon announcement:
Customers will use their local library’s website to search for and select a book to borrow. Once they choose a book, customers can choose to “Send to Kindle” and will be redirected to Amazon.com to login to their Amazon.com account and the book will be delivered to the device they select via Wi-Fi, or can be transferred via USB. Customers can check out a Kindle book from their local library and start reading on any generation Kindle device or free Kindle app for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry or Windows Phone, as well as in their web browser with Kindle Cloud Reader.
Borrowers of Kindle e-books are supposed to be able to:
* Wirelessly sync their books, notes, highlights, and last page read across Kindle and free Kindle reading apps
* Have access to real Page Numbers to let them easily reference passages with page numbers that correspond to actual print editions
* Share favorite passages with their Facebook and Twitter friends
* See what other Kindle readers think are the most interesting passages in the books
* Be able to use public notes to share notes
For details, check out your local library’s web site. We checked ours and didn’t see any reference to a Kindle Library Lending program. 🙁
Related Posts:
Who Says Americans Don’t Read? They Still Do & Increasingly on E-Readers
Kindle Review – At $189, You’d be a Chutiya Not to Buy this eBook Reader
Kindle e-Book Lending Debuts at 11,000 U.S. Libraries added by SearchIndia.com on
View all posts by SearchIndia.com →
http://www.wakegov.com/libraries/about/digital/kindle.htm
yay! In the autumn of your life, why don’t you move to a decent place!! 😉
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Sad, the First State is no longer first at anything!
Our state’s only claims to
fameinfamy are Joe “I’m too dumb to write my speech, so I stole mine from a British leader” Biden, Christine “I’m not a witch” O’Donnell and the downstate woman who started the nonsense about Obama’s birth certificate. 🙁wondering how long it will take for those e-books to replace the real books not only in the stores but also in the libraries.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
We’d reckon at least a decade if not more before the trees (for the schmucks – trees are the source of paper) start to see some relief.
I just hope that B&N does’nt go the way as Borders……still amazed that BAM is still around……
SearchIndia.com Responds:
We went to a B&N store yesterday, spent about 45-minutes there and didn’t see much activity.
The writing is on the wall for B&N too and if you strain your ears you can hear the bells tolling for them as well.
While the B&N Nook e-reader is popular and has gotten decent reviews, we doubt it’ll ever grow into a big enough business to compensate for the rapidly declining print business.
I havn’t been to a B&N since school started,mainly because I’m a little short on Laxmiji,on the bright side,I have managed to save up enough to satisfy my Indian food cravings every friday afternoon!
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Who needs books when you can get GarlicNaan. & Paneer Butter Masala.
Well I just finished “We the Living”,it only took me about a month and a half,with school and everything else(everthing else being a group of thugs who are trying to get me jumped for some bizare reason!),hope to start “The Fountainhead” tommoro,also we’re screening an Ayn Rand movie at the college,hopefully we’ll get a good turn out!
SearchIndia.com Responds:
The books in the trilogy get progressively longer now with Howard Roarke – Fountainhead & John Galt – Atlas Shrugged.
If that is to happen, it is not just the books, but the physical libraries that would get replaced by devices and web libraries.
On SI’s point, then aren’t we going to create more of e-wastes and dump them on to anywhere? Since Silicon is the second most abundant thing after oxygen on earth, humans are going to extract it until they run out of sand! 🙂
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Haven’t we been dumping our E-wastes in India, Africa and China already?
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-06-05/jaipur/28179235_1_pc-dealers-jaipur
BTW, have you started carrying a pad with you, ahem, the iPad?
No, not yet! After your price comparison statement, I’m still under confusion whether to ask someone to carry it from US or buy it one from here! Am a cheapo desi, you see!
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Oh, so you’re moving about iPad-less in the Chennai heat. 🙁
With millions of food-less, homeless, hopeless, faithless, and ruthless chennai citizens a.k.a sons of the soil, it’s not a sin to walk around iPad-less !
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Ruthless or rootless?
Just sent you an e-mail. Please check.
Bought a 6 inch Kindle recently.
Quite happy with the E-ink technology – just feels like a book. However lot of space is wasted, Steve Jobs would have never let it like that. They could have easily increased the screen size or squeezed the size of the device overall with the same screen size.
Kindle format is too good to read but not happy with pdf. Most of my ebooks are in pdf format.
Tried some converters but still not as good as native Kindle format ones.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
iPad 2 is the best e-reader. It also has a Kindle app and since the iPad screen is backlit you can read in the dark too (of course, you’d rather be doing something else in the dark but we’re talking of serious bibliophiles). 😉
Most likely, Amazon will soon dump the current generation Kindle and go for a touch-screen version.
>> iPad screen is backlit you can read in the dark
I think this was intentional. The best part with E-ink technology is that it is not backlit – so it doesn’t strain your eyes one bit and it just gives feel like a book.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
We’ve used both Kindle and iPad 2 and our personal preference is for the iPad.
But the Kindle seems less likely to get damaged should you accidentally drop it.
In any case, we strongly believe Amazon will kill the current generation of Kindle in the not-too-distant future and replace it with a touch-screen based model.
how many books approximately have you read in iPad so far?
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Full Book – one. Bits & pieces of several.
Articles – Countless.
Just by reading one book, how do we term it as the best e-reader? How many have you read on Kindle? [I hope, many]
SearchIndia.com Responds:
You write: Just by reading one book, how do we term it as the best e-reader?
In our not so humble opinion, e-readers ought not to restrict themselves to serving up only books. And iPad does not.
There are countless magazines and newspapers that have a dedicated app for iPad – Times of India, New Yorker, BBC, Politico, Bloomberg, AP, Macworld, Engadget etc. We read several of them daily.
But as we said earlier, besides one full book we’ve also read parts/sections of several other books. BTW, the one full book we read on the iPad, Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now, is 700-pages long.
On Kindle, we’ve mainly read/reread essays from several books. Johnson, Macaulay, chapters from Gibbon’s memoirs etc.
OK. That question was more related to the feel of reading books for hours on iPad compared to the feel of reading physical books.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Overall, we’re happier reading on the iPad be it for a short while or an extended period.
I quit watching TV and going to the movies for the most part,increased my reading time dramatically over the last few weeks…..glad I did so
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Quit watching TV?
Not watching trash like Dancing With the Stars, Talk Shows on cable or similar junk?
Then you have no hope in America!
I have faith in Howard Roark and Dominique Francon,that’s all I need to survive in this country!
Kindled out a book from our library and also returned it.. works quite well – on the PC. I have got the Kindle app on the iPhone and the Android phone.. but PC is by far the best..
Also got hold of “Great Soul”.. but our library didn’t have a Kindle copy. Most probably will return it without reading..(iPhone takes most of my already busy/lazy schedule)
Were you able to complete it or did you abandon it halfway through.. It doesn’t seem to have a flattering rating on Amazon..
SearchIndia.com Responds:
We doubt our libraries have started Kindle lending.
But buying a Kindle book via iPad is smooth & very fast.
Purchased the new book (Outlaw Album) by Winter’s Bone author Daniel Woodrell the other day. Whole process took like 30-seconds or less via the iPad. Read 4 stories so far. All Good.
Completed Great Soul some time back but just don’t feel like doing a full-fledged review. Book reviews draw the least views on the SI blog. 🙁