Amazon announced today that they will be adding the capability for their Kindle devices
“We’re excited that millions of Kindle customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from their local libraries,” said Jay Marine, Director, Amazon Kindle. “Customers tell us they love Kindle for its Pearl e-ink display that is easy to read even in bright sunlight, up to a month of battery life, and Whispersync technology that synchronizes notes, highlights and last page read between their Kindle and free Kindle apps.”
Customers will be able to check out a Kindle book from their local library and start reading on any Kindle device or free Kindle app for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone. If a Kindle book is checked out again or that book is purchased from Amazon, all of a customer’s annotations and bookmarks will be preserved.
“We’re doing a little something extra here,” Marine continued. “Normally, making margin notes in library books is a big no-no. But we’re extending our Whispersync technology so that you can highlight and add margin notes to Kindle books you check out from your local library. Your notes will not show up when the next patron checks out the book. But if you check out the book again, or subsequently buy it, your notes will be there just as you left them, perfectly Whispersynced.”
To my mind this closes a major hole in the Kindle’s marketability versus much of its competition. The library lending feature will make use of the Overdrive format/technology, the current leader in the field of libary e-lending (if I may coin yet another e-word). Now all that remains is to find out how soon “later this year” is, though I’m sure that at the latest they want it ready for the Christmas buying season.
[...] no Kindle e-book version, though you can get it as a PDF or EPUB e-book from Packt (and Amazon has announced Kindle support for EPUB sometime later this [...]