My mom has a library card at the big city library that I live in. She’s been checking out books for years whenever she’s here for a few days visiting.
She recently bought a Kindle. I’ve been looking at this library’s web site. The Ebooks can be checked out from there. They use Overdrive and that supports Kindles and Adobe EPUB, PDF readers. Most books I looked at in their catalog are checked out. Apparently these Ebooks are already very popular at the library.
Will the library restrict downloads to a certain geographic area? Or do they even care enough to check IP numbers? I’m a little afraid to ask them directly. I might not like the answer.
Mom lives 120 miles from me in a small town. Her local library is way underfunded. They don’t even keep up with recent releases. I doubt they’ll consider Ebooks anytime soon. They barely keep the utilities paid and doors open.
Someone at the local county library told me that they have a contract agreement for these ebooks, so I’m assuming that the cost to provide these comes directly out of county funds, which come from county property tax payers. So if a town is in Multnomah County here in Oregon, a person can check out an ebook. Otherwise, no. There is also a limit on how many books you can check out, and for how long.
The San Diego library requires you to have a San Diego library card to check out ebooks. I don’t think there is any attempt to check the IP addresses to verify location. They use overdrive as well. I would imagine that most libraries will have something similar.
Another scenario would be when you go on vacation. You might be at a hotel in another state. But with internet and Wi-Fi you could pull up your local library’s website and check-out a Ebook to read. Assuming you have a card at your local library.
There are legitimate reasons you may want to check out a book from out of town. Heck, I’ve taken library books with me on short vacations. Read them and return them when I got back a few days later. I always worry about losing or misplacing the book. But, so far that’s never happened. I’m extra vigilant that it stays in my suitcase when I’m not reading it.
The New York Public Library used to let non-residents buy a library card for $80 a year, but they recently discontinued it because (supposedly) the publishers didn’t like people all over the country using the e-book access. I think some of the other big city libraries might have similar programs, but I wouldn’t be surprised if those go away soon too.
I’ve used my old Seattle library card to check out e-books even though I haven’t lived there in years, so at least there once you’ve got a card they don’t check your IP or anything like that.
Library licenses for resources available off-site are generally tied to the library card. There may be different levels of access for non-residents (like some academic libraries will have different access levels for alumni or for community/business users). If, however, her card is not a non-resident card or if that library doesn’t have different access levels, then she’d have the same access levels as a resident.
She should check her local library too - it might be tiny, but it may have consortial access. It may not, but if it does, it could increase what she may have access to.
Mom has her own library card from the library near my house. She visits and stays with me regularly. She actually got her card before me. Sometimes I think she looks forward to the library visits more than me. She can easily plow through a couple books a day.
I just wanted to confirm whether she could check-out Ebooks from outside this area. It sounds like she can. It’s worth trying anyway.
