Tuesday, January 17, 2012

E-Books, My Kindle, and the Library!

So our local library has the literature out to program your library card and kindle to check out e-books. I'm very excited about this as the books have internal "bombs" built in so that they just disappear when the due date comes and you have no fines! YES!  They have online resources as well that can be found here in their Overdrive system.

I also found out that if you are an Amazon Prime member (cost around $70 a year) you can borrow books for the Amazon Kindle for free at a rate of about 1 to 2 a month. You must return the book to the Amazon lending library before borrowing a new one and it is permanently erased from your Kindle but still a good idea. This resource is available for new books as well as older titles. I have "tried" the beginning of two series through this method and now will most likely buy the next book in the series. Yes I will BUY the next book in the series.

So why am I interested and excited about this and what is the concern?
Interest One: Way to get access to more books with more portability
Interest Two: Possibly way to avoid the ouch factor of my ever existing library fines. $30+ this time!!!!
Concern: The libraries keeping up with e-demand and keeping up with the stodgy and freaking publishers. The article by the Washington Post on the issue can be found here.

The publishers need to learn that if you give me something to try at the library for free or to read then the library will buy more and I will eventually buy more. The libraries can eventually charge a minor cost for the access or will actually see the shift in their costs from just hard bound to the e-book licenses. In either case more people reading is a good thing.

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