It’s no surprise to see a library offering ebooks to their patrons, but when a library offers 50,000 ebooks it is pretty impressive. It’s especially impressive since the list of Kindle Owners’ Lending Library ebooks where Amazon lends ebooks directly to Kindle devices only shows around 5,000 ebooks right now. The Hawaii State Public Library System is now offering around 50,000 ebooks through OverDrive (the ebook provider for pretty much every library).
Hawaii residents can browse through the ebook collection online and borrow up to ten ebooks for up to three weeks without going to the library.
Ebooks are the fastest growing portion of the library’s circulation. The launch of Kindle books at libraries and the new Kindle Fire next week are expected to dramatically increase the demand for ebooks at libraries.
Will ebooks also be available on the Nook reader?