back to article OverDrive

Apple’s iBooks Store is as slick – and expensive – as you’d expect any Apple product to be, but it’s not the only source of digital books for the iPhone and iPad. Alongside apps from commercial rivals such as Amazon's Kindle, I recently discovered an app called OverDrive that gives you online access to the UK’s public lending …

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  1. Ralthor
    Big Brother

    eBook lending restrictions

    The reason there are only a number of copies available is down to licencing restrictions imposed by the publisher. Understandable imo. What I find less comprehensible is the fact that if you had dug deeper you would have also found that the books may only be loaned a certain number of times. To imitate the wear a physicall book aquires over time I believe, but still ridiculous for a digital copy.

    1. Nigel Whitfield.

      Sort of

      It's not exactly to imitate the wear received by a physical book. It's to prop up the profits of publishing houses that are scared witless by the move to digital. We covered this back in March at

      http://www.reghardware.com/2011/03/02/library_e_books_get_time_limit/

      and there's also more on my own blog at http://gonedigital.net/tag/ebooks/

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Apple restrictions

    Overdrive lending libraries application uses Adobe DRM which is also notable in Apple's walled garden.

  3. gyre

    Geography Failure

    A lot of the libraries that were listed as being in the south west.. are actually in the south east. Not a good start.

    Also, typically, my local library doesn't understand digital anything. It's still in the stone age :(

  4. Stephen 2
    Thumb Up

    Good start

    Seems like a great start and once it gets featured on more places like theReg and shared around Facebook, it could be a real winner. More users = more libraries coming on board and improved software.

    A great way to modernise the UK library system.

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