Mixed Answers to "Is It OK for a Library To Lend a Kindle?"

Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 4/7/2009

• Amazon rep tells library OK
• Amazon official tells LJ no
• Librarian says Kindle well-received

As a few more libraries begin lending the Kindle, the ebook reading device from Amazon, the company continues to offer ambiguous messages regarding its policies. Asked by the Howe Library, Hanover, NH, if it was OK to lend a Kindle, an Amazon support staffer said yes—and the library has proceeded to do so, with much positive response.

However, another support staffer told blogger Rochelle Hartman that the Amazon Terms of Service bar lending of Kindles. Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener confirmed to LJ—as he did last year—that the policy bars library lending, but “we don't talk about our enforcement actions.”

In practice, that apparently means that Amazon doesn’t pursue enforcement, given the negative public relations impact from going after libraries, coupled with the potential ambiguity of the Terms of Service, which bar a user who wishes to "sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party."

One library's story
Mary White, director of the Howe Library, told LJ that she and a colleague called Amazon Kindle support last August 29 to explain what they wanted to do with the three Kindles that were to be purchased with donated funds. Among the questions: how to deactivate the library’s account so patrons couldn’t add titles to the device. The library was not told its plan was not permitted. 

White pointed to the Terms of Service. “I am not an attorney,” she acknowledged, “but it seems to me we are doing none of those things,” suggesting that "distribution" of an ebook is not the same as lending one item to one person--the same as buying a printed book. 

(In fact, the Amazon rep told the library could load its 13 titles, which cost $10 each, on each of the three devices, for a total cost of $130, not the expected $390. Hartman points out that this policy does not seem to be on the Kindle 2 page.) 

Maybe Amazon didn’t contemplate library lending, White noted, but the Kindle has been on the market for a year and a half now. “Amazon is missing a great opportunity,” White observed. “If Amazon donated Kindles to public libraries, many patrons would discover that they love this newer technology and would then purchase a Kindle for personal use.”

User response
White said that Howe got three Kindles last October, keeping one in-house for people to try and lending the other two. Then, given a long holds list, they started lending the third. “We just bought our fourth Kindle, a Kindle 2, and it will stay in-house," she said. "We intend to call the 80-plus people on the holds list and tell them.”

Although the library has not changed the 13 titles yet it probably will do so down the line. “I think people here understand that right now our primary objective is to just let them play with the technology, not to satisfy everyone’s individual reading desires,” she said.

White can envision the Kindle becoming very useful for libraries, offering a low-cost alternative to sometimes costly interlibrary loan, and even providing access to newspapers for which on-time daily delivery is difficult.

And what if someone damages a Kindle? Howe users must sign a form acknowledging they’re responsible for the $360 replacement cost (plus a processing fee). They also must agree not to download additional books.

Howe’s list of titles
Most of the titles were on the New York Times Bestseller List in October 2008 when How launched its service:

Audition, by Barbara Walters; Change of Heart, by Jodi Picoult (local author); The Glass Castle: A Memoir, by Jeannette Walls; The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer; In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan; The Lace Reader, by Brunonia Barry; The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch; A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle (Oprah’s Book Club Selection); Sail, by James Patterson and Howard Roughan; The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski; Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson; When You Are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris; The Whole Truth, by David Baldacci; and The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan (for the library’s Book Discussion Group)