The Kindle Lending Library will soon be available to approximately 11,000 libraries across the United States. Barnes and Noble already has had a similar program for some time for its popular Nook e-book reader and Sony also participates in the same program for its popular Sony Reader device. Similar capabilities are also already available for Blackberry, Apple iPhone and iPad, and other digital devices. All these programs are administered by Overdrive, a company that specializes in lending ebooks, audio books, and more.
The new Kindle Lending Library allows Kindle users to not only borrow ebooks through the designated libraries, but also to include annotations and bookmarks. These customizations won't be visible to other borrowers of the same ebook, but will re-appear should one decide to borrow the book a second time. Most books have a loaning period of 7 to 14 days
The Kindle Lending Library will launch sometime later in 2011 and will be available to owners of every version of the handheld e-reader.
You can read more about the existing services from Overdrive at http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20049244-1.html
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