Driven in large part by the proliferation of tablets and e-readers, digital book lending is on the rise, according to OverDrive, a leading supplier of digital content to U.S. libraries. The company, which partnered with Amazon for its Kindle lending program, reported recently that it saw a 130% increase in traffic to its "virtual branch" websites last year. OverDrive works with 18,000 libraries to offer e-books and other digital content to members.

The Kindle Fire may not be an iPad killer, but it sure is mimicking Apple's early tablet sales growth. The device was the top-selling item on Amazon over the holiday season, with its e-ink counterparts not too far behind.

Mobile devices like tablets and smartphones have played no small role in the growth in library lending of e-books. OverDrive reports a 22% increase in traffic from such devices. In total, traffic to the company's virtual branches double from 2010 to 2011, to 1.6 billion page views. In addition to iPads and Kindles, the OverDrive borrowed e-books were accessed from Android devices, Nooks, iPods, Windows Phone and Blackberry smartphones, and the Sony Reader.

The organization says it is founded on four key elements: open source code, linked meta-data, multi-media content and tools and services. What would a new world online be without a new public library?

The Harvard-born organization is meeting today to discuss the best of almost 40 different submissions to a code sprint began this Summer. Proposals range from building a real-time collaboration layer online for all the libraries in the country, to cataloging every state's cultural resources online to multiple systems of organization for all the data available.

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society, DPLA's parent organization, is live streaming and live tweeting today's plenary meeting here.

Streamlining (both downloading and ordering)
Explosion (we have gone from two reading devices to 85 and more are coming)
Premium (the library catalog as the most premium, value-added site on the Web)
Traffic (enormous growth coming by year's end)

Amazon has generally been slow to allow lending on the Kindle, and they've also been cautious about the branding. But Potash's hint seems to indicate that library lending for Kindle has almost arrived, and none too soon for the e-book release of Harry Potter.

But even in the states where e-book access is commonplace, when it comes to making digital literature available to their patrons, libraries face a number of challenges. We've covered many of these issues here. Most well-known among these obstacles was the controversial announcement earlier this year by publisher Harper Collins to have library e-books "self-destruct" after 26 checkouts, forcing libraries to re-purchase titles in order to secure more checkouts. This among other factors (including, of course, budget issues) has made the future of e-books in libraries unclear.

A number of announcements made during the ALA's annual convention this past week suggest that the tipping point of e-book library lending may be here:

• "Always Available" E-Books: In order to address the problem with wait lists for checking out e-books, OverDrive announced a set of "Always Available" titles so that multiple library patrons could check out titles simultaneously. Although digital texts do make it possible to distribute multiple copies this week, in most cases, up until now, lending of e-books has followed the same restrictions of print. In other words, if a book is checked out - whether it's print or digital - no one else can read it. OverDrive's "Always Available" books do not include all its titles, but it's a sensible start.
• Magazine Checkouts: Digital newsstand Zinio announced it has partnered with Recorded Books to allow digital magazines to be available to library patrons in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the U.K.
• Library Checkouts for Nook: Library lending comes to the Barnes & Noble Nook with a partnership between the bookseller and digital distributor Baker & Taylor.
• The Open Library Serves More Public Libraries: The Internet Archive announced that it has expanded its OpenLibrary lending program to its 1000th library. This program allows libraries to pool and share their e-books.

There have been fears on the part of many librarians that the move to digital content would harm libraries - not because of any problem with the digital format per se, but rather that some of the restrictions on their access to materials and to lending would be too onerous. However it appears as though there are a number of new pricing models for libraries and a number of lending alternatives. Patrons clearly want to borrow and read e-books, and most libraries are in the process of developing programs to make that possible.

Earlier this spring, Amazon announced that it would be working with OverDrive in order to make it possible for libraries to lend Kindle books to their patrons. OverDrive already provides digital content to libraries and schools, and by making the popular Amazon format an option, it was anticipated that many more people would be able to take advantage of library e-book lending.

In anticipation of Amazon's lending library opening later this year, OverDrive has just made a number of announcements about its plans to work with libraries in order to facilitate e-book lending.

Platform Agnostic, DRM-Free E-Book Lending

OverDrive says it will become platform agnostic and "eliminate the need for librarians and readers to deal with various e-book file formats." In addition to supporting multiple file formats, OverDrive says that it's launching "Open E-Book," a DRM-free collection. These formatting options will make it much easier for libraries and for patrons to be able to access content across devices and platforms.

OverDrive is also tackling a long-standing complaint about e-book lending: the fact that it's restricted by the same laws of physics that bind printed books and that if someone else has checked out an e-book, it isn't available for anyone else. OverDrive says that it will provide new "always available" e-book collections so that multiple patrons can read certain titles simultaneously.

And finally, it's going to enable "patron driven acquisition," an opt-in program for libraries that will let readers immediately borrow a title (or recommend that their local library purchase it) from online booksellers.

All of this sounds fairly promising, although it's worth pointing out that many of the details of how these things will be implemented aren't available yet. OverDrive says it will offer more details at the American Library Association conference at the end of the month.

That is, until today, with the announcement from Amazon this morning that it is launching a Lending Library "later this year" that will let Kindle owners check out books from their local library.

Libraries will still have to decide whether or not to purchase licenses for e-books from the publishers, and after the recent HarperCollins decision to make e-books "self-destruct" after 26 check-outs, many libraries are notably concerned about how e-book lending will work.

Amazon says that its lending feature will work with Kindle devices, as well as with Kindle apps. It's also adding a pretty cool new feature: the ability to actually make margin notes in your library books. You'll be able to take notes, store them privately - in other words, the next library patron won't see them - and then access them again should you check the book out again or purchase it in the future.

Although Kindle users have been able to lend e-books to one another since December of last year, that process restricts a loan to just once per book.

With this new Kindle option available, will you check out e-books from your library? That's a question that libraries and publishers - and now Amazon - are very interested in seeing answered.

Libraries may be on the front-lines of this latest battle, one that makes it clear that issues like DRM and lending policies can have troubling repercussions. Although the HarperCollins announcement impacts just lending through libraries, librarians are quick to point out that it isn't simply their institutions that will suffer.

To that end, librarians have started issuing statements, posting an "e-book users bill of rights" to their blogs. The statement, posted in full below, addresses "the basic freedoms that should be granted to all e-book users."

Should Libraries Avoid DRM Content?

The librarians' statement challenges the use of Digital Rights Management (DRM) which makes possessing an e-book a lot less like ownership and a lot more like licensing or subscription. As author Cory Doctorow notes in his story on the HarperCollins e-book lending policy, DRM media is "unsafe at any speed."

I mean it. When HarperCollins backs down and says, "Oh, no, sorry, we didn't mean it, you can have unlimited ebook checkouts," the libraries' answers should be "Not good enough. We want DRM-free or nothing." Stop buying DRM ebooks. Do you think that if you buy twice, or three times, or ten times as many crippled books that you'll get morenegotiating leverage with which to overcome abusive crap like this? Do you think that if more of your patrons come to rely on you for ebooks for their devices, that DRM vendors won't notice that your relevance is tied to their product and tighten the screws?

HarperCollins isn't the first time that access to e-books have been retracted. Amazon set off an uproar several years ago when it summarily deleted Kindle users' copies of George Orwell books.

Is DRM the price we pay to move to digital content? Is it a necessary move in order to convince publishers that their products are (relatively) safe from piracy? Or is this price too high, closing down access to information, art, and literature?

The E-Book User's Bill of Rights

Below is the text of the E-Book User's Bill of Rights:

Every eBook user should have the following rights:

• the right to use eBooks under guidelines that favor access over proprietary limitations
• the right to access eBooks on any technological platform, including the hardware and software the user chooses
• the right to annotate, quote passages, print, and share eBook content within the spirit of fair use and copyright
• the right of the first-sale doctrine extended to digital content, allowing the eBook owner the right to retain, archive, share, and re-sell purchased eBooks

These rights are yours. Now it is your turn to take a stand. To help spread the word, copy this entire post, add your own comments, remix it, and distribute it to others. Blog it, Tweet it (#ebookrights), Facebook it, email it, and post it on a telephone pole.

But imagine, if you will, a publishing company - oh, let's say HarperCollins - telling libraries that after checking out a book a certain number of times - oh, let's say 26 - that they've reached the cap on loans. The book can no longer be shared, and libraries need to return the copy or buy the book again.

Sound crazy? Well, that actually is the new policy for HarperCollins, reports Library Journal, detailing the new terms for its e-book loans via OverDrive, the main e-book distributor for libraries.

"To provide you with the best options, we have been required to accept and accommodate new terms for eBook lending as established by certain publishers. Next week, OverDrive will communicate a licensing change from a publisher that, while still operating under the one-copy/one-user model, will include a checkout limit for each eBook licensed. Under this publisher's requirement, for every new eBook licensed, the library (and the OverDrive platform) will make the eBook available to one customer at a time until the total number of permitted checkouts is reached. This eBook lending condition will be required of all eBook vendors or distributors offering this publisher's titles for library lending (not just OverDrive)."

Potash's letter doesn't specify HarperCollins by name, but the publishing company has confirmed to Library Journal that these are, indeed, its new terms for lending e-books. The new cap for the number of times an e-book can be loaned will be 26.

The publishing company has issued a statement, saying that it "is committed to the library channel. We believe this change balances the value libraries get from our titles with the need to protect our authors and ensure a presence in public libraries and the communities they serve for years to come."

Librarians are, not surprisingly, up in arms over the announcement. (You can follow the hashtag #hcod hashtag on Twitter.)

We've written several times here at ReadWriteWeb about the future of libraries and e-books. It's an important issue - as more and more library patrons are keen to borrow digital books - but a complicated one - as the publishing industry has, in many cases, been reluctant to make the move to e-book lending. It's worth noting that two of the largest publishers, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster, still do not make their e-books available for libraries to loan.

As frustrating as e-book lending policies are for consumers' personal copies, the stakes are significantly higher for libraries. Already facing budget cuts and crises, many libraries are struggling to keep their patrons happy with e-readers and e-books. The answer, according to HarperCollins it seems: just buy more printed books.

The hope is that this effort will help libraries make the move to digital book lending. "As readers go digital, so are our libraries," says Brewster Kahle, founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive.

Lending e-books has proven to be quite complicated, for both individual book owners but certainly for libraries. As we have written here before, some publishers have been fearful of the move to digital books, let alone the move to e-book sharing, refusing to allow their books to be made available for lending or only allowing loans with certain on-site restrictions.

The publishers participating in this OpenLibrary project, including Cursor and OR Books, have a very different take on the future of libraries, publishing, and lending. "Libraries are our allies in creating the best range of discovery mechanisms for writers and readers - enabling open and browser-based lending through the Internet Archive means more books for more readers, and we're thrilled to do our part in achieving that," says Richard Nash, founder of Cursor.

As a number of startups spring up to take advantage of the lending options available on Kindles and Nook readers, it's good to see public libraries also moving to embrace e-book lending.

The report by the "Comité des Sages" was delivered to the European Commission earlier this week and calls for continued development of Europeana, the portal to Europe's digital libraries, as well as for efforts to expand access to public domain material. EU member states must ensure that all material that's digitized with public funding is available online and that all public domain masterpieces are available via Europeana by 2016. Works that are still covered by copyright but are no longer distributed commercially need to be brought online as well, and if the rights holders do not do so, cultural institutions must have the opportunity to digitize the material and make it available to the public.

That's an oblique reference to Google, whose efforts to digitize the world's books have caused some concerns in Europe over copyright issues and licensing agreements. The report notes that Google has digitized about 15 million of the world's 130 million unique books and has entered into exclusivity agreements with some institutions. The report urges agreements of this sort between the private sector and public cultural institutions to be made public, with the preferential use for the digitized material to be kept to a maximum of seven years.

The report does recognize the importance of these private efforts and says that EU member states need to find a way to match private investment and build partnerships with private companies. But as the report notes, "Can Europe afford to be inactive and wait, or leave it to one or more private players to digitise our common cultural heritage? Our answer is a resounding 'no'."

Photo credits: Trinity College Library via Plants Need Water

The report is based on data from a survey conducted in 2010 that looks at broadband usage in schools and libraries. The survey found that almost all respondents have some form of broadband connection to at least one facility. Just 2% use satellite and 3% use dial-up in order to access the Internet.

However, nearly 80% of all survey respondents say their broadband connections do not fully meet their current needs. 55% say that slow connection speed is the primary reason their needs aren't met. 39% says that cost of service is the major barrier to meeting their Internet needs. 27% cite installation costs as the barrier. Rural schools and libraries, in particular, struggle to provide adequate bandwidth to their users.

What Are E-Rate Recipients Using Broadband For?

Email tops the list of the most-used app by E-rate users. 98% of respondents say that's what Internet access is regularly used for and 69% say it's the most essential app. For libraries, online reference materials are the most important and most used app. 86% of library staff and patrons regularly use online reference materials, and 62% say it's the most essential tool they access online.

Schools and libraries both indicate that they see usage increasing. For example, 56% of all E-rate survey respondents say they plan on expanding their usage of digital textbooks in the next 2 years, and 45% say they plan to implement or expand their use of handheld devices for educational purposes. Currently, the average student-to-computer ratio of those schools responding to the survey is 5.86 to 1.

According to the FCC, this data will help the agency make better policy decisions for the E-rate program. The FCC has made better broadband access one of its major goals.

These questions and concerns over e-book lending are bringing attention to libraries' services, a good thing I'd argue, as the role of libraries expands from "repository of printed books" to include other technological services (most importantly, perhaps, community access to Internet).

Proof, perhaps, that you can lend e-books and not "undo the entire market for e-book sales."

The statistics come from the over 13,000 libraries, schools and retailers that use OverDrive's digital distribution services. And according to these figures, more than one million new users signed on to access e-books and audiobooks via "virtual library branches". Over 718 million titles were viewed in the company's Web-based catalog and over 15 million digital titles were checked out.

The most popular fiction title: Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The most popular nonfiction title: Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. These were the most popular titles for audiobook downloads as well.

OverDrive says that it makes over 400,000 copyrighted e-books, audiobooks, music, and video titles available to libraries, which patrons are able to download to their phone, PC, or e-readers. OverDrive is one of several options that libraries can pursue in order to make digital content available to their patrons. In November, we reviewed the Bluefire Reader app that uses Adobe Digital Editions in order to facilitate library checkout of e-books.

But according to some publishers, if libraries start lending e-books, it could serve to "undo the entire market for e-book sales." Those were the words of Stephen Page, CEO of the publisher Faber and Faber who spoke last month at a library conference in the U.K. and announced the Publisher Association's new stance on e-book lending via libraries.

He told those present that "all the major trade publishers have agreed to work with aggregators to make it possible for libraries to offer e-book lending" with the addition of certain "controls." These controls would require library patrons to be onsite in order to access the e-books. And furthermore, libraries will only be able to lend one copy of an e-book to one individual at any given time. Why, it's almost as if digitizing books did not free them from their physical confines.

These restrictions hamper the access of those who cannot visit libraries in order to read books - the homebound and the disabled, for example. They make the process of interlibrary loan impossible. And honestly, they seem a little absurd. But these policies - both for personal and library lending - echo the sorts of restrictions that DRM has long demanded around music and movie sharing, and they come with the same sort of doom-and-gloom predictions should people be able to share content freely.

Looking for (DRM-Free) Alternatives

But not all publishers are on board with this idea. Springer Verlag recently announced that it would make its e-books available without DRM restrictions to institutional purchases. "Libraries buy direct from us and they own the content," says the publisher's director of channel marketing George Scotti. "Once users download content, they can give it out, share, whatever. They own it. Some of our competitors are afraid to do this, but we say, free the content."

Challenging the publishing industry's attachment to DRM, in an article this weekend in the Guardian, Simon Barron contends that "Applying physical paradigms to digital commodities shows a lack of digital understanding. Cory Doctorow argues that trying to control digital copies of work on the internet is 'a fool's errand: that digital works require different models for control, distribution and profit. The price for trading in digital commodities is to accept the nature of digital commodities: they can be copied, they are accessible virtually anywhere, and that physical restrictions do not and cannot apply."

Libraries of the Future: Lending E-Books and E-Readers

Whether or not they can access DRM-free content from publishers, Some libraries are adapting. Recognizing the growing demand for e-books, they are pursuing not just the lending programs for e-books but those for e-readers as well, in order to help their patrons access material digitally. While the Terms of Service say you can't share your account information on the devices, the Library Journal suggests that Amazon may be simply turning a blind eye to the enforcement around this.

Libraries will have to embrace digital books to stay relevant to readers looking for books. Of course libraries' relevance involves much more than simply being a repository for books, e- or otherwise. Libraries are community centers. They are places where people can access not just literature and the latest magazines, but also find Internet access and computer stations.

It's worth noting too, that despite the great role that libraries play in literacy and in the preservation of literature, they are only a small part of the buying market for books - less than 4% by Faber and Faber's own admission. So to say that allowing libraries to lend e-books will destroy the publishing industry seems - excuse my literary reference here - a bit of a tall tale.

According to an article in Library Journal, the decision is the first of its kind and "may lead some libraries to adopt more stringent Internet filtering policies."

The decision answers the question of "Whether a public library [...] may filter Internet access for all patrons without disabling the filter to allow access to Web sites containing constitutionally-protected speech upon the request of an adult library patron." Of the nine judges issuing the opinion, only three offered a dissent.

"The plaintiffs' claims of overbreadth, prior restraint, and that NCRL's Internet filtering policy is an impermissible content-based restriction all fail to account for this traditional and long-standing discretion to select what materials will be included in a public library's collection," the court writes in its opinion.

According to those judges agreeing with the opinion, "The reason is simple: in determining the makeup of their collections, public libraries have limited resources, including computers; some libraries in this case have only one or two. Public libraries may determine -- by filter -- among the vast sea of educational and informational materials which materials are appropriate for the libraries' collections. "

The dissenting opinion acknowledges that "the vast majority of what the censor catches is low value speech" but that "The filter should be removed on the
request of an adult patron. Concerns that a child might see something unfortunate
on the screen must be dealt with in a less draconian manner."

Treating the Internet as if it were a part of the printed collection does indeed have a draconian feel to it, as it disregards the general real-time nature of information in modern society. Though the ruling decides that the filtering does not constitute a form of prior restraint, it acknowledges that filter removal can, at times, take until the next day if not longer. While this may seem reasonable, should one person have less access to information than another, simply because they rely on the public library as a point of information rather than purchasing it on their own?

According to the report, "The wiring of public libraries has transformed one of the nation's most established community resources into a critical digital hub".

As Seth Godin pointed out last January, libraries "can't survive as community-funded repositories for books that individuals don't want to own" and that the "number one thing they deliver to their patrons is free DVD rentals."

Now, we can add "Internet access" to the top of the list, as "Internet access is now one of the most sought after public library services," according to the report.

The report notes that patrons use the Internet for a variety of tasks - from job searches to civic participation to finance to school kids doing their homework - but offers an interesting stat right off the bat: Of those people using the Internet at the library, "more than three-quarters of these people had Internet access at home, work, or elsewhere."

The library, it would seem, offers a respite from the coffee shop, a refuge from familial fights over the single home computer and an alternative to the dizzyingly slow dial-up Internet that so many still have to deal with. But what are they doing with this new found Internet provider?

Another telling number was that 60% of respondents said they use library computers to maintain "social connections," and we can't help but wonder if libraries are giving people a safe place to Facebook-lurk. That is, many places of employment and schools ban social networks - are libraries a way around that for workers and teens?

Overall though, the report does seem to show that libraries are a "technological lifeline to children and families in need", with 44% of people in households below the federal poverty line using public libraries for Internet access. And while we may make fun of Facebook occasionally, social networking can be a key tool in finding employment and networking. But beyond that, we can see that employment, education and health information are among the top use cases.

In the end, the report calls for continued support for a public system that seems to be the biggest bridge for the digital divide. It is certainly a shift in focus, but we hope that any hard feelings over digital taking away from the printed word don't get in the way of keeping public libraries funded.

As the report reads, "The findings signal this is a moment when federal, state, and local governments should invest more, not less, in the computing capacity of the nation's libraries to help advance a wide range of policy goals."