Is It OK To Lend a Kindle?

Our report that the Sparta Public Library (SPL), NJ, had begun to lend Amazon.com's Kindle ebook reading device (see News, LJ 1/08, p. 20) has inspired some other librarians to consider Kindles—and to discover that, according to the Terms of Service, they can't “sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party.”

Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener told LJ that a loan of a Kindle without content is OK, but sharing a device loaded with content “with a wide group of people would not be in line with the terms of use.”

Is Amazon cracking down on the library? “We do not publicly discuss individual enforcement situations,” Herdener said. At SPL, assistant director Diane Lapsley told LJ that there has been no word from Amazon. “All we see ourselves doing is providing a great service—and advertising the heck out of their product,” she said.

Meanwhile, blogger librarian Rochelle Hartman and others have commented that they don't see the costly Kindle—which, when loaded, represents hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars of value loaned to one person—as a wise choice for libraries. Lapsley responded that it makes a swift and inexpensive alternative to interlibrary loan. (For more on Kindle lending, see Editorial, p. 8.)