Sony announced a deal on Tuesday that will let users of its Sony Reader e-book device check out digital books from college and public libraries.
The new feature involves a service by a company called OverDrive Inc., which distributes electronic books to about 9,000 libraries, about 100 of which are academic libraries.Now libraries that use the OverDrive service will give patrons the option of downloading the e-books to their Sony Readers. A few weeks after a user checks out a book, the loan period ends, and the e-books are removed from the user’s collection.
David Burleigh, director of marketing for OverDrive, said the company has about 100,000 books in its collection from a variety of publishers.
On Tuesday, Sony also announced a new model of its e-book reading device, to be called the Reader Daily Edition, which will connect to wireless networks so users can download books without plugging the machine into a computer. Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader already has that capability.
