eBook Reader Guide

Something that you may not be aware of is that the Sony Reader ebook reader range has the capability to handle eBooks that you’ve ‘borrowed’ from online libraries. It even keeps track of how many days the title has got remaining on the loan, displaying that along with the author and title information of the book on the index pages.

The catch is that, in the UK and Ireland combined, there are currently only 20 libraries that do support this type of loan – See here for the list – although they may not all require a library card to sign up…

Once signed up, you just need to browse to a book you’d like, although be careful, as they tend to bundle Audiobooks and eBooks together as “digital books” and you probably can’t play WMA files on your ebook reader! Anyway, find a book you like, then it should just be a matter of checking it out, with the option of going for a shorter loan than usual if you’re a fast reader.

With Essex, at least, you can only have 3 titles on loan at any one time, with choices of EPUB or Mobipocket formats – you’ll want EPUB for the Sony Reader range of ebook readers, which has an additional advantage in that the Sony eBook Library software allows you to return the loan early if you want, immediately allowing you to borrow a different book, rather than having to wait until the 7/14/21 days of the original loan have expired.

While the number of titles are limited, so you can’t check out a book that someone else has on loan unless the library has multiple copies available, you can register your interest via a wish-list, which will result in you getting a notification email when the title you’re after is available – I’d happened to browse there shortly before Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” was released and registered for it so had it to read on the day of the release! (I count that as saving me some money, as I might have bought it otherwise and been disappointed – While I thought the other two Robert Langdon titles were “OK, I suppose”, this one really seemed to me to be a “Knock something quick out for the cash” one…)

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