Amazon to Offer Kindle Book Lending in Libraries

Amazon has announced an interesting new program that will allow libraries to lend Kindle books. It's not providing too many details on how the program will work, but Amazon says it will be available from 11,000 libraries in the US.

It's a welcomed change, Amazon hasn't been to kind to this idea in the past, but the whole thing re-opens the discussion about how physical items translate into the digital realm.

"Customers will be able to check out a Kindle book from their local library and start reading on any Kindle device or free Kindle app for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone," Amazon said.

"If a Kindle book is checked out again or that book is purchased from Amazon, all of a customer's annotations and bookmarks will be preserved," it explained.

Amazon touts the fact that you'll be able to make annotations on the books you borrow and those annotations remain linked to your device. Obviously that's one advantage over real books, the fact that you can read them on your Kindle device or any other device with the Kindle app.

And since plenty of Americans already have Kindles, the program may prove quite successful. However, there are several caveats and plenty of unknowns at this point.

For one, it's not clear what extra steps users will have to take in order to get the ebooks or whether they will be able to do it online without having to visit the library.

It's also unclear what limitations, if any, will be placed on Kindle ebook lending. Ebooks, obviously, are digital objects, they can be duplicated infinitely, so the library could lend as many books as it needs to, in theory. It should also be able to lend a book as many times as it wants, though, again, there are no details on this either.