Borrow The Borrowers

It sounds sort of obvious, but public libraries have stepped forward now that e-books have become mainstream and are offering bookworms the chance to borrow books from them.

I came across the obvious-when-you-think-about-it concept when writing a review of the Sony Reader Pocket Edition e-book reader. It’s a solid e-book reader and was my top pick of devices being reasonably priced, well-built and easy to use.

An outfit known as Overdrive appears to be behind the scheme, but essentially the scheme works by allowing you to borrow digital copies of the books at your local library. To do so, you must become a member - a neat way of getting you to mosey down there and have a look at what it has to offer. After a set period, the book you've borrowed must be returned, though there are no library fines, simply a revocation of reading rights once the loan has ended.

Of course, not all books in your local library will be available to borrow in digital form (though presumably you can politely request titles they stock are added to the digitising wait list). The beauty for many reading fans will be that you can broaden the range of books you can enjoy on your ebook reader or laptop (it's also possible to read books acquired this way on a Windows Mobile Phone and some other smartphones) without having to stump up a chunk more money.

It sounds like an excellent plan all round and I've already been down to my local library to see what's on offer.

iPads and e-books

As a tech journalist, I get my hands on all sorts of goodies. This week has been especially fortunate since I was one of the first people in the UK to have first-hand experience of the brand-new Apple iPad. Much cunningness and forward planning went into this, for which credit is due to my husband Mark. The result: the opportunity for an early comparison of the iPad against other e-book reading devices. I spent a long time ensuring I was able to number a Kindle, a Sony Reader, an iriver Story and a couple of other less well-known devices among the stash next to my desk.

Suffice to say the iPad is bigger, brighter and better, but also larger, more cumbersome and essentially a different device from the dedicated e-book readers. My conclusion, in fact, is that the Kindle and the Sony Reader, which I still rate as the best examples of their kind, are complementary devices to the iPad rather than likely to be edged out the marketplace because of its launch.

Research into the e-book reader market shows that electronic publishing is thriving. Publishers' Weekly reports that e-book reader sales jumped by 176 percent in 2009.

Links to my reviews of e-book readers, along with several others' can be found here.