OK, maybe they aren't impossible to understand, but they do seem to be sending out a number of contradictory messages these days about Kindle and ebooks. We all know that Amazon has a proprietary format for ebooks, making a Kindle or Kindle reader the only way to access material sold by them. We know that they only allow a very limited sharing of Kindle books between readers.
Then, they struck a deal with OverDrive, a library ematerials lending service to allow Kindle users to download and borrow books through the service. There seems to be, to put it delicately, "a number" of steps to actually get the book loaded on to your Kindle using OverDrive. This article shows the process as seen at the Seattle Public Library which is currently testing the service.
We had been kicking around an idea here that was similar to this way back at the start of the year. We were thinking about simply buying a number of Kindles and building collections of high demand titles on them (as those titles were "demanded") and checking the Kindles out to people. I know this is not what Amazon intended, but maybe they will eventually come up with something similar.
On a final note, the State Library of Kansas has a set up a news page for disseminating information about state-wide initiatives they are working on. It is worth a look and an occasional check-in to see how they are progressing. Ultimately, this may be a service the Hutchinson Public Library participates in assuming it gets going in the near future.
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