Cleveland Public Library Readies E-book Downloads

rtphokie writes "C|Net is reporting that the Cleveland Public Library is making ebooks available. Sounds like the 1000 books in the system initially will feature more than just public domain titles including 'the latest from authors such as Michael Crichton, Clive Barker and Joyce Carol Oates.'" The article also mentions that "only a limited number of each eBook will be available, and after a preset number of days, the eBook will lock out the current reader so another patron can check it out." A good time to re-read The Right to Read.

Comments

The first?

[Cranky_92109]

I can't speak to who is the first, but I have checked out an eBook online 8 months ago through my local library: San Diego Public Library.
SDPL uses this company: NetLibrary.
It looks like NetLibrary provides this service for other libraries, but I'm too lazy to look for details.

Footnotes, illustrations, modernized language...

[Kjella]

All of those are copyrightable, presumably also other things as typesetting and whatever, as long as it's the publishers work. If you want an edition free of copyright, you could get the actual text electronically from project Gutenberg or similar.

Kjella