[OPLIN 4cast] OPLIN 4Cast #219: E-book lending (personal)

[Editor]

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. 
<http://www.oplin.org/4cast/>
OPLIN 4Cast

OPLIN 4Cast #219: E-book lending (personal)
March 2nd, 2011

<http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/share_ebook.png>It's 
a safe assumption that most of our readers have heard of the 
recent move by Harper Collins to restrict the lending of 
their e-books by libraries; the news lit up Twitter and 
other news channels at the end of last week. If you need a 
reminder of what's going on, we recommend the article from 
the New York Times 
<http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/a-limit-on-lending-e-books/> 
and/or Joe Atzberger's blog 
<http://atzberger.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-overdrive-drm-terms-this-message.html> 
post. In our blog post, we thought it might be interesting 
to look at the current state of person-to-person e-book 
lending. After all, many of the earliest public libraries in 
this country had their beginnings as interpersonal 
book-lending groups before they became more formally 
organized. (Of course, these days the groups are likely to 
be Internet "friends," rather than neighbors.) Perhaps we 
can find some clues to successful e-book lending models by 
looking at e-book clubs. Or perhaps they're just having the 
same problems that are plaguing libraries.

    * New Kindle lending club matches e-book borrowers and
      lenders
      <http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/new_kindle_lending_club_matches_e-book_borrowers_a.php>
      (ReadWriteWeb/Audrey Watters) "The Kindle Lending Club
      is the brainchild of Catherine MacDonald, who said
      that when she heard Amazon announce on December 30
      that it was finally adding a lending option for Kindle
      </http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/amazon_kindle_now_lets_you_loan_your_e-books_sorta.php/>,
      she decided to set up a Facebook group---a way to help
      people find others who were willing to share their
      e-books. But as interest in the group exploded,
      MacDonald realized that Facebook just didn't offer the
      scalability needed for such an undertaking. 'I had no
      idea how viral the idea was,' she says."
    * E-book lending clubs
      <http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2011/02/e-book-lending-clubs.html>
      (ALA TechSource/Tom Peters) "What I find fascinating
      about these eBook lending clubs is that they realized
      that, once Barnes & Noble and Amazon enabled the
      lending of etexts, a nascent market had been born.
      However, it was an inefficient, disorganized market
      because, if I own a lendable Kindle edition, I have no
      efficient way to lend that etext to someone else who
      wants to read it, unless I just happen to know a
      family member, friend, or colleague who might be
      interested in reading one of my Kindle editions."
    * Friends, Romans, countrymen lend me your ebooks
      <http://librarianbyday.net/2011/01/26/friends-romans-countrymen-lend-me-your-ebooks/>
      (Librarian by Day/Bobbi L. Newman) "First let me state
      that I think the lending rules on the Kindle and Nook
      are complete rubbish. I mean really the selection is
      very limited and you can only lend an item one time
      and for only 14 days."
    * Kindle & Nook book lending
      <http://www.pafa.net/archives/2748>
      (pafa.net/pollyalida) "While I love the idea of being
      able to loan the few books I've purchased, the
      restriction on loaning a title only once will turn me
      into more of a hoarder than a lender. If I'm going to
      loan a title that I really enjoyed, I want to loan it
      to a friend, a good friend. And not just any good
      friend, but that one very good friend who will love
      the book the most. And the one who can get through it
      in the limited 14 days. Don't bother loaning me
      anything, I'm a slow reader."

*/Club fact (kinda):/*

Several people have posted lists of e-book lending groups, 
but the Tom Peters blog post cited above is the most current 
and (if you include the comments) most complete that we found.
------------------------------------------------------------
The */OPLIN 4cast/* is a weekly compilation of recent 
headlines, topics, and trends that could impact public 
libraries. You can subscribe to it in a variety of ways, 
such as:

    * *RSS feed.* You can receive the OPLIN 4cast via RSS
      feed by subscribing to the following URL:
      http://www.oplin.org/4cast/index.php/?feed=rss2.
    * *Live Bookmark.* If you're using the Firefox web
      browser, you can go to the 4cast website
      (http://www.oplin.org/4cast/) and click on the orange
      "radio wave" icon on the right side of the address
      bar. In Internet Explorer 7, click on the same icon to
      view or subscribe to the 4cast RSS feed.
    * *E-mail.* You can have the OPLIN 4cast delivered via
      e-mail (a'la OPLINlist and OPLINtech) by subscribing
      to the 4cast mailing list at
      http://mail.oplin.org/mailman/listinfo/OPLIN4cast.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.oplin.org/pipermail/oplin4cast/attachments/20110302/7a9ff12f/attachment-0001.html
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: kubrickheader.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 38379 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mail.oplin.org/pipermail/oplin4cast/attachments/20110302/7a9ff12f/kubrickheader-0001.jpg
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: share_ebook.png
Type: image/png
Size: 11637 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mail.oplin.org/pipermail/oplin4cast/attachments/20110302/7a9ff12f/share_ebook-0001.png