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By David Rothman

kindlespartapubliclibrary “Goofy,” says librarian and TeleBlog contributor Rochelle Hartman, after learning from Library Journal that libraries can loan a Kindle as long as no content is on it.

As reported in LJ: “Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener told LJ that a loan of a Kindle without content is OK but sharing a device loaded with content ‘with a wide group of people would not be in line with the terms of use.’” The public library in Sparta, NJ, which does loan out Kindles with books, hasn’t heard from Amazon despite an LJ story about its new service. For now, it appears, the loans will continue. Screenshot is from the library site.

In other Kindle matters:

  • Amazon bullied Kindle News into becoming e-BookVine—you can’t be an Amazon affiliate and use a Web address with the sacred K word—but Jason Schramm of The Kindle Report so far has refused to do a rename and turn his domain over to Jeff Bezos and friends. “I understand they need to protect their copyrights and trademarks,” he writes in an informative post reproducing the note Amazon sent him, “but there has to be another way. They risk losing a lot of goodwill from Amazon fans.” Amen. While not a lawyer, I’m all for protection of intellectual property, but here Amazon is “protecting” itself from additional revenue that would affiliates can reel in if they’re easy for people to Google up. Wouldn’t the name “Kindle” be helpful? Amazon could still require that the affiliates took care to distinguish themselves from the mother ship.
  • VC Josh Kopelman reminds of us of a generic negative of e-reading gizmos, not just the Kindle—the ban on use of electronic devices “during the first 20 minutes of a plane ride. It’s pretty frustrating to see everyone around you reading a book/newspaper, when your Kindle needs to be holstered.” For the positives of the Kindle for jet travel, check out Evan Schnittman’s thoughts.
  • Kopelman likes the ability to read the first few chapters of Kindle books for free and weed out the losers, while Kevin Manley, over at Portfolio, wonders how that might change the nature of books. Remember, the starts of many old-fashioned books are written with the entire work in mind, as opposed to going for immediate gratification of readers. Granted, many shoppers in bookstores will check out the first pages, but they they may also flip through the rest of the books.
  • “The Kindle does not induce customers to take time out of their day to read a book and fully understand it,” complains Stephanie Tanizar in The Graphic at Pepperdine University. “Instead, it lets customers take the book into their hacked up time to digest it in unappetizing dribs and drabs. The tradition of putting time aside in order to read is dying out.” Here’s the answer, Stephanie. More leisure time. Good luck getting it in today’s economy, though.

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