Even before I was given a Kindle, I was vaguely interested. I use my local library a lot, and review and annotate stuff on their new system. Recently the library has been pushing the fact that ebooks are available for borrowing. In fact, they had a meeting about e-readers (which, worse luck, I was unable to attend), and even have some e-readers as loaners.
So, when I got the Kindle, the library site was one of my first stops.
It was not an unqualified success.
First of all, my local library has no ebooks for loan. The actual ebooks seem to be loaned by the BC Libraries system. I say “seem to,” because the actual ebooks, and the system for controlling them, seems to be run by an American outfit called OverDrive. This becomes important once you start looking for titles and ebooks. There is Kindle compatible material, but none of it is available in Canada. (Which seems very odd when the site is supposed to be about the “BC” libraries.)
There are a very large number of ePUB format titles. There are even some that appear to be free for the taking. I tried one, converted it to .MOBI, and it seemed to work OK.
For the actual loan books, I placed a hold. The hold came in. I read the directions on the “Check Out Assistance” link. I installed Adobe Digital Editions (ver. 1.7.2.1131) (even though I am, as a security specialist, really uncomfortable with Adobe products) in order to be able to return the item. I “downloaded” the item to Adobe Digital Editions. It now appears in my “library” on Adobe Digital Editions. However, the way to “return” the item required help from a library tech, and it definitely is not intuitively obvious. Oh, and it definitely won’t convert to Kindle format.
I guess I have to go to other sources.
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