The CEO of OverDrive, which distributes e-books and audiobooks to libraries, has dropped a pretty obvious hint that the Kindle will join other major e-readers in public libraries in September. EarlyWord reports that Steve Potash looked “like a kid with a delicious secret” at OverDrive’s Digipalooza conference last weekend, saying that he was “not allowed to announce a date ye[t],” but he included this blunt clue in his “Crystal Ball Report” during the final session:
Streamlining (both downloading and ordering)
Explosion (we have gone from two reading devices to 85 and more are coming)
Premium (the library catalog as the most premium, value-added site on the Web)
Traffic (enormous growth coming by year’s end)
OverDrive’s WIN platform for library lending is up and ready to support Kindle, but Amazon has been cautious about rolling out Kindle lending to libraries, even as Nook, Sony Reader, and Kobo e-books are already available.
Amazon has generally been slow to allow lending on the Kindle, and they’ve also been cautious about the branding. But Potash’s hint seems to indicate that library lending for Kindle has almost arrived, and none too soon for the e-book release of Harry Potter.
