All of us who have been following the Overdrive/ebook situation should be interested in this announcement in Library Journal.com:
“In a surprising move, library equipment manufacturer 3M Library Systems recently announced that it would be unveiling a new ebook lending service for libraries-including an in-library “Discovery Terminal,” 3M eReaders, and 3M apps-at the American Library Association (ALA) annual conference, to be held in New Orleans in June. When launched, it would be a competitor to OverDrive, which currently dominates the library ebook market.
The service will make hosted, lendable ebooks available to libraries, with a selection of ebooks from publishers including Random House and Independent Publishers Group. Matt Tempelis, 3M Library Systems’ global business manager, said that a “very large” publisher had also already signed on but had yet to be announced, and that talks are ongoing with other publishers.”
We will be watching this development closely. At this time it appears that this new 3M service would be compatible with all major ebook readers except the Kindle.