Kindle E-Books Now Available from Richmond Heights Library

Kindle owners can now download electronic books for free using a service available to library patrons in and other St. Louis cities.

The nine-member Municipal Library Consortium of St. Louis County contracts with a company called OverDrive for the service, adult services librarian Scott Bonner of the said last week. The library begin getting audiobooks from the company roughly two years ago and recently added e-books to its repertoire.

The Kindle compatibility is new, and Bonner expects the e-book service to become increasingly popular with the release of cheaper versions of the device and the Kindle Fire.

"I would suspect that we're going to get huge e-book numbers by the end of Christmas," Bonner said.

At present, the consortium offers 800 e-books and 1,700 audiobooks. Most of the books are newer and include bestsellers, though there also are a few classics.

In September, Richmond Heights library patrons checked out 111 e-books and 103 audiobooks, Bonner said. The consortium had a total of 1,346 checkouts of e-books and audiobooks during the month.

Readers can access e-books for their Kindles, iPhones, Androids, computers and other compatible devices either from the library's catalog or the OverDrive website. Most of the e-books mimic a physical book circulating among readers in that only a certain number of copies are available at a time.

Library card-holders can also access e-books beyond Richmond Heights and its eight sister libraries. They can download e-books from the St. Louis County Library, St. Louis Public Library and St. Charles City-County Library District thanks to a reciprocal relationship the organizations share, Bonner said.

Many users will download books to their computers and then transfer the information to their mobile devices. Kindle books are checked out using OverDrive and delivered via Amazon. These readers must use their Kindle username and password to complete the download process.

The service also lets readers put e-books on hold. Email notification is provided when an e-book becomes available, and users have several days in which to check out the book or let someone else read it.

Other features of the service:

• Project Gutenberg content. ProjectGutenberg.org provides free digital access to numerous books no longer under copyright. Overdrive has cleaned up numerous texts on the website and made them available to e-book readers.

• Compatibility search. The OverDrive website lets readers search for books that are compatible for their electronic device.

• File size and more. OverDrive tells readers how much space an e-book will use on their device, the loan period, the number of parts in which the book comes and, for audiobooks, length.

• Checkout period. Readers can determine how long they would like to keep an e-book or audiobook from several options.

Those with questions about downloading or using e-books may use the help pages on the OverDrive site or speak with a reference librarian by calling 314-645-6202. The library owns a Kindle and a Sony electronic reader that staff can show patrons who are interested in learning more about the devices, Bonner said.

For those who own a portable electronic device but not a computer, the library provides a station at which readers may anonymously download books.

The library has no plans to reduce the number of printed books in its collection now that electronic books also are available, Bonner said.

But the move to supplement the Richmond Heights library's offerings represents part of a larger trend.

"This is kind of the way forward for libraries," Bonner said.