Welcome to “Library Day” at GirlHacker. I used to be a faithful library user, but then my local library dropped their lending period from four weeks to three weeks and I just couldn’t make that three week limit. When I was younger I used to think four weeks was a huge amount of time to finish a book. But nowadays I have less time to read plus I read more pithy stuff and actually pay attention to it. I mentioned the lending period change to my parents when I was in Connecticut and it turns out that my old library, the one I grew up with, also dropped to three weeks. It must be a library trend. But my dad’s pet theory is that libraries are buying the same new software which arrives defaulted to a three week lending period which no one changes. He might be right.

North Carolina residents now have rights to check out e-books from public and college libraries. This is the result of “a $288,000 deal that gives state residents perpetual access to 10,690 titles from netLibrary, a Boulder, Colo.-based company that distributes e-books to libraries.” After obtaining a netLibrary password, users can check out books for 72 hours. The books are “returned” automatically. I am not sure if there is a limit to how many users can check out one title simultaneously. The concept of “borrowing” an e-book has never crossed my mind, but I guess it makes sense in the old paradigm of library lending. If publishers are confident that users can not make and distribute copies of the books at no charge, then they should be satisfied with the business model. In fact, having users check out an e-book or purchase it outright for their own personal viewing system gives publishers an advantage: you can easily lend or give the physical books you’ve read to friends or sell them to used bookstores, but you can’t do that with a locked electronic copy. (article via LTSeek)