Amazon Opens Local eLibraries – Free eBook Loans

The only problem with eBooks is that you have to buy them – unless you’re downloading shady copies and annoying authors and publishing houses.

Well, Amazon is to launch a very cool new feature for its Kindle reader which will allow those of you that own their eReader to ‘borrow’ eBooks from over 11,000 local libraries across the country.

You will be able to check out digital books from these libraries for free and happily read them on your Kindle, your Mac or PC or any of Amazon’s smartphone applications.

If you return it and decide that you want to read the publication again then don’t worry – you are able to check out a book more than once – or even buy it from the Kindle Store. The beauty of this is that all of the annotations that you made will remain in place and will be unique to your copy of the book – something that gets rather frowned upon in real paper-based libraries 😉

Amazon Kindle Director Jay Marine explains: “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. he goes on to say: “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.”

This is all rather fab for those of you that read but this is currently a US-only service – Like the rest of Amazon’s services though, this will no doubt roll out across the international markets.

I’m not sure if this is a fortnight loan as I reported back in January or not – but we’ll find out soon enough as this scheme will be available in the US later this year.

Are you a Kindle user? Do you like the idea of free book loans? How about you students using eBooks – having the Whispersync must be handy.

Let me know your thoughts below 🙂