Thursday, April 21, 2011

Kindle To Visit Libraries

Amazon delivers. How can it be spelled in another way? The new initiative, not yet available though, is very tempting.

Amazon to Launch Library Lending for Kindle Books

As can be seen from the second level headlines, there are even more than one news:

Customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 local libraries to read on Kindle and free Kindle reading apps

Whispersyncing of notes, highlights and last page read to work for Kindle library books

These mean that we’ll have strong alternative to the only available methods of picking up the books. We could download samples, usually ten percent of a book or thirty or so for several technical books, or read users’ reviews.

Regarding samples, they never supported highlighting, public notes and sharing, but dictionary check was available.I must note that dictionary search without saving a fragment where the word is used is no much worth for language learners.

The worst thing here is that ten percent sample is not valuable if you need a dictionary, an encyclopedia or a technical book.

Reading of reviews may help here, but if there are less then tens of them, you are under the risk that one says about style, one about usability for on a device, one is about the story that the user bought it accidentally and so forth.

The new possibility is free from these disadvantages. We’ll be able to read a book for some time, see the book in a whole, do our notes that are preserved until we’ll borrow the book again or buy it. Other’s public notes won’t be visible in library books.

However, as a warning alarmed the phrase ‘Customers will be able to check out a Kindle book from their local library’, implying that the user should be registered in an offline library first.

Hopefully, Amazon will give us lending available for world-wide customers, not only those living in the US.

No comments:

Post a Comment