For those of us who gave in and went to the “dark side” of publishing, i.e., e-readers, finding digital books that you can loan or borrow beyond the minimalistic approach Kindle offers has long been a dream. This is why when I read about Oyster, I literally thought I heard angels sing. Okay, maybe just one.
This interesting news was brought to our attention by Info Docket in their article, “Oyster, a Spotify/Netflix-Like Service for E-Books Launches, Is the Library Community Preparing for These Types of Services?” Amazon’s Kindle Online Lending Library (KOLL) offers more than 400,000 titles to library users at libraries that subscribe to the service.
Today, Oyster launched a private beta for iPhone users only, at this point. The fee is $9.95 month for an unlimited number of e-books. You can register for an invite here.
Unfortunately, the library community doesn’t seem to be embracing any of these opportunities. It appears that most are taking the ostrich approach. But no matter how long they stick their head in the ground, digital publishing is not going away.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
