Amazon just announced a new program to facilitate the “lending” of Kindle books through 11,000 libraries. No word yet on how long you’ll be able to borrow them or if they will have a maximum number of checkouts before someone has to pay for some kind of renewal. Most interesting wrinkle here is the note taking set up. You’ll be able to make notes in the margins, highlight stuff, do whatever you want with the electronic book but your notes won’t show up the next time someone else checks out the same book. But they will reappear when you check out the book again or if you buy it. Neat, right?
But think about that for a second. How is that possible? With your Amazon ID. So you’re being tracked, you’re being target marketed, you’re being pushed stuff based on what you’ve told Amazon, a private company, you checked out from the public library. Is that a trade off you want to make?
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