3M Cloud Library eBook Lending Service to Launch at ALA Annual Conference

{"s" : "mmm","k" : "a00,a50,b00,b60,c10,g00,h00,l10,p20,t10,v00","o" : "","j" : ""} Press Release Source: 3M On Thursday May 19, 2011, 4:09 pm EDT

3M:

About 3M Library Systems
3M Library Systems is the only company that develops, designs, and manufactures cutting-edge digital media, circulation management and security solutions. Finding the technology solution that is right for our customers, 3M's promise is to deliver a long term partnership that is built to exceed their expectations. For more information about 3M Library Systems, visit http://www.3m.com/library or follow @3MLibrary on Twitter.

About 3M
3M captures the spark of new ideas and transforms them into thousands of ingenious products. Our culture of creative collaboration inspires a never-ending stream of powerful technologies that make life better. 3M is the innovation company that never stops inventing. With $27 billion in sales, 3M employs about 80,000 people worldwide and has operations in more than 65 countries. For more information, visit www.3M.com or follow @3MNews on Twitter.

3M is a trademark of 3M. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

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3M Cloud Library eBook Lending Service to Launch at ALA Annual Conference

May 19, 2011 04:09 PM?Eastern Daylight Time?Random House, IPG among first publishers to partner

--(BUSINESS WIRE)--3M:

“We worked closely with librarians to develop this system, which enabled us to create a solution that meets the needs of both librarians and library patrons”

About 3M Library Systems
3M Library Systems is the only company that develops, designs, and manufactures cutting-edge digital media, circulation management and security solutions. Finding the technology solution that is right for our customers, 3M's promise is to deliver a long term partnership that is built to exceed their expectations. For more information about 3M Library Systems, visit http://www.3m.com/library or follow @3MLibrary on Twitter.

About 3M
3M captures the spark of new ideas and transforms them into thousands of ingenious products. Our culture of creative collaboration inspires a never-ending stream of powerful technologies that make life better. 3M is the innovation company that never stops inventing. With $27 billion in sales, 3M employs about 80,000 people worldwide and has operations in more than 65 countries. For more information, visit www.3M.com or follow @3MNews on Twitter.

3M is a trademark of 3M. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

View the original article here

Amazon shuts down ebook lending site Lendle

A while back, prompted by the Barnes & Noble Nook’s cool book lending feature, Amazon decided to roll out the same thing, baking ebook lending capabilities into their Kindle software. The idea is sound and addresses some of the complaints about digital media, in that it allows you to lend an ebook out to a friend without simply copying it for them. The owner of an ebook gets to loan it out once; the publisher of the ebook gets to maintain control over the way the work is distributed. A pretty good compromise.

Soon enough, though, Amazon’s Kindle ebook lending function inspired some sites dedicated to lending ebooks to strangers. Lendle was one of those services. It was a free site that did not feature ads. Once you signed up for a Lendle account, you’d sync your Amazon ebook library with it: Lendle would then determine which books were lendable and list them as available for borrowing. If someone wanted to borrow that ebook, Lendle would put them in touch. The idea was that if you lent out one book, you’d be able to borrow some other book you wanted to read from someone else.

It was a pretty cool service. Very gentlemanly. Unfortunately, Amazon didn’t approve, though. According to Lendle’s website, “Amazon has revoked Lendle’s API access. Unfortunately, Lendle is unavailable indefinitely. We will do everything we can to restore service soon.”

Why did Amazon revoke Lendle’s API access? According to Amazon, Lendle “didn’t serve the principal purpose of driving sales of products and services on the Amazon site.”

That’s a very strange perspective on the matter for Kindle to take. As Lendle’s co-founders point out, you can’t actually borrow books on the Lendle site if you haven’t also made your own Kindle ebooks available for lending. Moreover, just because you don’t know the person borrowing your book, that doesn’t mean they’re less likely to buy their own copy of the ebook once their 14 day lend runs out.

What a weird move. I’m hoping Amazon caves on this, but I’m not holding out hope: Amazon’s been extremely cautious about its lending policies, and don’t even advertise the Kindle’s ability to lend ebooks to friends and family members. My guess is that their too afraid of pissing off the publishers to bend on this, even if it makes an entire community of customers less likely to buy Kindle ebooks.

Read more at Ars Technica

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Kindle, Nook lending site, eBook Fling, goes live

 eBook Fling allows both Kindle and Nook users to lend e-books. Membership is free.

(Credit: eBook Fling)

In the past month or so, a couple of e-book-lending sites, Lendle and BookLending, opened for business. Those sites cater to Kindle users, but Book Swim's eBook Fling, which officially launched today, offers lending to both Kindle and Nook users.

How does e-book lending work? Well, while publishers only choose to make certain e-books lending-enabled, plenty of e-books are available to loan out on a very restricted basis. If you own a lendable e-book (they're labeled as such), you can loan it to one person, one time, for 14 days.

The sites all work in much the same way, each offering free membership into their respective lending "clubs." In the case of eBook Fling, you sign up and list the titles you have available for lending, then wait for requests to come in. You lend an e-book by simply sending an e-mail invite to the requesting borrower and in return, you earn credits for each "successful fling."

If you don't have any credits available, you can pay $1.99 to borrow a book, which is, we assume, how the site makes money, along with earning sales leads from Amazon for embedding links to purchase books when they aren't available to borrow.

While more folks are choosing to check out e-books from their local libraries using OverDrive's Media Console apps for Android, BlackBerry, iPhone/iPad, Windows Mobile devices, and Windows and Mac computers (the Kindle does not support library lending), eBook Fling is counting on Nook and Kindle owners' desire to extract some added value from their e-book purchases.

To avoid privacy concerns, the sites encourage members to create a custom e-mail address just for Kindle or Nook lending activities that's separate from your personal e-mail address or the e-mail address associated with your Nook or Kindle.

A key factor in all this is how many people end up signing up for the lending club and seeding the site with content to borrow. A recent Wall Street Journal article quotes Catherine MacDonald, the founder of BookLending, saying her site has more than 16,000 registered users and the site has a total of nearly 20,000 book loans so far. It will be interesting to see how this submarket pans out and whether publishers, who are wary of e-book lending, embrace it further or continue to proceed very cautiously.

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