Today's news in Publishers Weekly is a great advance in e-book lending! The Douglas County Library system in Colorado has developed their own e-book lending platform and are populating it at a breakneck speed.

This is being facilitated by Smashwords. That's right...Smashwords just signed and agreement with the library to provide them with 10,000 e-books for their new system. This was sign, sealed, and delivered with one simple agreement called “Statement of Common Understanding for Purchasing Electronic Content.” Just a plain simple and straightforward agreement on current copyright laws.

I see this as a boon to independent and self-published books, and it helps to open up the libraries of the world to e-books. Now more library systems will be motivated to move forward, and more developers will come up with platforms to help.

Rock on e-books!

What do you think about this latest development?