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Comment by dagw | Hacker News Reader

has this person never checked out an ebook from their local library?

To be fair I don't know anybody who has either. I know it's possible and I know my local library offers this, but I've never met anybody who's actually used this service.

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I use it all the time, and is incredible convenient. I use Libby, and it works basically the same as the Kindle app, but with fewer features.

Check it out, it's a great resource!

Definitely check it out (pun not intended). Libraries are amazing institutions that many younger people assume are antiquated but are really keeping up with the times. Also, besides ebooks, many of them also have digital magazines you can read on your phone or tablet. I read the New Yorker and The Economist that way.

My county library has a poor electronic collection. Still, I tried to check out a book and got put on a waiting list with 30 other people. That was before Christmas. I haven't heard anything else about it.

Waiting lists happen with popular new books with physical copies as well. If you look for books that are a year or so old, or are something other than popular fiction (science or history for example), normally you can get a book immediately in my experience.

I'm surprised. To me it seems like the only reasonable way to use eBooks.

The only reasonable way to use ebooks is to buy the non-DRMed epub, drop it on your web server in a password-protected directory, and read it from all the devices you want to read it from.

I tried it once. You had to wait like 3 weeks for Overdrive to let you download one of the few books in their collection (mostly kids books and just pop garbage).

Going to libgen is a much better experience.

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