Amazon is learning to love libraries. The online retail giant announced Wednesday that owners of its Kindle e-reader will be able to borrow — and annotate — digital books, for free, from two-thirds of U.S. libraries starting later this year. Amazon is joining a program run by OverDrive, which offers more than 400,000 digital books at 11,000 libraries. The Barnes & Noble Nook and Sony Reader already use the service, but because Kindle is the top-selling e-reader, the announcement has raised another round of questions about the balance of power among libraries, publishers, and retailers like Amazon. So is this really good news for libraries and bookworms?
This could revive libraries: The details are still sketchy, but it sure looks like, after being "implicated in the death of book retail chains like Borders," Amazon is looking to work with libraries rather than compete with them, says Max Eddy at Geekosystem. This program could boost library membership and, "at least for now, seems like a win for users and for their libraries as well."
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