Amazon Kindle Library Lending to Roll Out This Year

Amazon is talking up a new service for the popular eReader called Kindle Library Lending. The service is just what it sounds like; you can go to your local participating library and check out an eBook to read at home. The eBooks will eventually expire, but while the user has the book, they can read it all they want and even make digital notes on the margins of the book.

If the reader goes back to the library and checks out the same title again, their digital notes will be associated with the book again. If the user liked the book so much they want to purchase, the notes will be there on the paid version too.

“Normally, making margin notes in library books is a big no-no,” Jay Marine, director of Amazon Kindle, wrote in an April 20 statement. “Your notes will not show up when the next patron checks out the book. But if you check out the book again, or subsequently buy it, your notes will be there just as you left them.”

Amazon isn’t offering a specific date for launching the lending service. It only says that the service will launch later in 2011. It will launch with about 11,000 books that the reader can borrow at all sorts of libraries around America. It’s not clear what sort of tech the library would need to purchase to use the feature.

The lending service will work with the new ad-supported Kindle too.