Legal Research

Will Kindle ever add support for library books?

By admin

You might want to read this posting from the Kindle Blog:

Will Kindle ever add support for library books?

Read it but the unofficial answer is basically ‘no, really no’. “The quick answer would be ? Not Really. Not unless Amazon lose [sic] its head. Not unless another company starts beating it on the basis of library book support. Not unless there?s a gun put to its head.”

Anyway, read their reasons.

OK, you’ve read it.

Now, are you mad? angry? Do you think reading should be controlled by a dominant device in a marketplace? Is this a healthy eco-system for the world? Should access to reading be allowed to be limited
by a company? What comes next . . . censorship, removing books you’ve already bought, invading your reading privacy, submitting to DOJ requests, . . .? Hmmmm.

Maybe, maybe not. Just be happy to organize your libraries and staff to point this out to patrons when they ask. You can say that Amazon’s Kindles don’t ‘allow’ them to read library e-books. You can point out that the Sony Reader, Borders’ or Chapters’ Kobo, the enTourage Edge, The B&N Nook, and others do ‘allow’ them to read the e-books that their tax dollars provide or that their schools and universities require them to read.

Let’s not play dead or promote Kindles as viable options for libraries. Is this enough pressure or are we wimps?

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on January 14, 2011 (boomark / email).