This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
What good is a Kindle electronic book reader if there's a whole subsection of books you can't read on it?
That's a question that has plagued many a Kindle owner after realizing they can't perform one simple task — borrow an e-book from the public library.
But that's about to change. Amazon and OverDrive, the biggest supplier of e-books for libraries, announced it will make its digital books compatible with Amazon's Kindle device sometime later this year, said OverDrive's David Burleigh.
In Utah, that means the Salt Lake City Library, Salt Lake County Library, Weber County Library and Pioneer — Utah's Online Library will be able to make their e-books available for the Kindle.
"I can't wait," said Kindle user Shannon Bludworth, 30, Salt Lake City, who owns more than 400 books on her e-reader. "It will be like getting a pay raise because I spend so much on buying books for it."
It's also good news for librarians, who are tired of fielding complaints from Kindle owners. Previously, only Sony e-readers and the Nook by Barnes & Noble have been able to download books from the OverDrive system, the biggest e-book catalog used by Utah's libraries.
"Our help desk will be very happy," said Marsha Leclair-Marzolf, associate director for the Salt Lake County Library System. "A lot of people have purchased Nooks just because they know they can borrow from the library, so that's been a deciding factor for many on which reader to buy."
With more than 20,000 titles available, Salt Lake County's 18 libraries have the largest collection of OverDrive e-books available for download. Salt Lake City's library system, which just implemented OverDrive earlier this year, has more than, 1,800 books and downloadable audiobooks. Weber County's library system has only 700 e-books from OverDrive and an additional 3,000 from NetLibrary, another downloadable e-book catalog for libraries (it's also not compatible with the Kindle). And Pioneer — Utah's Online Library, which is operated through the state, has 5,550 e-books available through OverDrive. OverDrive's Burleigh said he could not be more specific about when Kindles would compatible except "later this year."
Under the OverDrive system, a user can download a book for free for one-, two- or three-week periods. At the end of the lending time, the book is automatically locked, and the reader is prompted to delete the file.
Unquestionably, e-readers — along with computer tablets — have become the must-have consumer electronics device of the past year.
So far, Apple has sold nearly 20 million iPads (which are compatible with all library e-books). Amazon does not release unit sales of the Kindle, but industry analyst Forrester Research estimated last year that more than 4 million Kindles were sold by the middle of 2010. And that doesn't count the number of third-generation Kindles that have been sold since.
The Kindle is the leader among those e-readers dedicated to just books, unlike the multipurpose iPad. According to MediaPost, the Kindle holds 59 percent of the e-reader market, followed by the Nook's 11 percent and Sony with 5 percent.
Even though the Kindle has become the most successful e-reader, it never has been compatible with all the library e-book systems because of the copyright protection Amazon uses to protect e-books from piracy. Amazon developed its own form of digital rights management (the digital copyright-protection scheme) for the Kindle, while the Nook and Sony's readers use a form of DRM from Adobe, which is compatible with library e-books.
When Kindles become compatible later this year, all generations of the device will work with library books and won't require any hardware upgrades, OverDrive's Burleigh said.
"It is going to be compatible with all the existing books that [libraries] have, but we haven't gone into detail yet as to how the whole process will work."
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