I've always assumed that when it came to lending e-books that Libraries would need to find a method to share the digital files housing the books in question. That the e-book files would distributed to the user's reader, and then deleted once the lending period was finished. While things may eventually work that way in the future, I'd like to share a very interesting service being pioneered at Oregon State University where the pre-loaded Kindle hardware is the item being circulated.
Students are invited to spend up to $20 on any item in the Amazon Kindle store; items which become part of the Library's e-catalogue, and gradually indexed using Library Thing. The total collection is 57 titles, with the Library lending a grand total of 5 Kindles. Still in the experimental stage? Of course, but it's also incredibly inspiring in terms of Libraries & innovation.
There were probably two big obstacles to getting this service into operation: 1) complying with Amazon's guidelines, and 2) budget. For number one, Amazon doesn't allow for lending of digital titles, so the Library was smart enough to do an end-around and marry the reader device to the content. Technology is becoming increasingly disposable, so why not? [As an aside, this isn't the most cost effective strategy now, but one can imagine how dropping tech prices may make this a solid tactic in the future.]
The second hurdle was probably budget – as in, they had little to no budget to get the program off the ground (I don't know, just a guess). But if you consider how bootstrapped this service is, you'll see how they've almost 'guerrilla marketed' their test offering into production. What's the cost here? perhaps two or three thousand dollars? If budgets were holding back this group, they certainly found a way to get things started. Once launched, even in (or because of) limited supply, there was almost guaranteed to be a backlog. Add in a little marketing magic, a growing waiting list for the new service, and presto! You're tripling the size of your Kindle lending operation.
So smart.
Several other US academic libs are lending Kindles as well. NCSU allows users to suggest content, and has reported some really interesting findings (most of the books loaded are children's literature). I can't find my copy of their report at the moment.
Texas A&M lends devices, preloaded with course materials. Report in the journal Collection Building,vol. 28(4), 146-149 http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0160-4953.htm
Highwire recently published the results of a survey of librarians on interest in e-books. The executive summary is here http://highwire.stanford.edu/PR/PR_HWeBookSurveyResults_4Mar10.pdf, which includes a link to the full report.
I'm working on a survey of parliamentary and government libraries to check the state of e-book adoption in these communities.