Check it out: eBooks at Hennepin County library

A trip to a Hennepin County library to get your hands on a hot best-selling book for free is about to become a trip into cyberspace.

Starting July 19, the state's largest library system will make 700 books available as eBooks for downloading to computers, laptops and eReaders. Patrons will be able to download as many as 15 items at once. Selections will include nine of the 10 titles on the New York Times Best-Seller List, among them "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest."

The venture, announced Thursday, marks an important turning point for metro-area and state libraries serving as dispensers of what are expected to be growing supplies of free, popular digital entertainment to portable devices.

Hennepin joins public libraries from New York to Seattle and Iowa City to Pittsburgh that offer books, movies and other materials in digital form, an approach that librarians locally and nationally expect will soon be the norm.

"It's really exciting," said Gail Mueller Schultz, collections and technical services manager for the Hennepin system. "It will be very interesting to see where it will end up."

Audra Caplan, national president of the Public Library Association, said, "The e-format just gives us the ability to address the needs of our customers in a different way."

Washington County, which does not offer eBooks yet, hopes to follow Hennepin's lead and soon integrate eBooks into its system after sorting out legalities with publishers.

New tech, same problem

But going digital won't eliminate the wait for a copy of a popular book. The Hennepin system is only buying two copies of each of the 700 titles, which means there could be a long wait for such titles as "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" or the latest "Twilight" offering.

In addition, patrons will not be able to download the eBooks on two popular e-readers: Amazon's Kindle and the Apple Ipad.

According to library officials, eBooks have surged in popularity at libraries around the country. More than 1 million eBooks are being downloaded each year, up from 600,000 as recently as 2007, according to OverDrive, the company providing the download service for Hennepin County.

"It's been very successful," said Caplan, also director of the Harford County Public Library system near Baltimore, Md.

Downloaded items will have expiration dates, instead of due dates, which allow patrons to access the material for a limited time. No need to return the item, library officials said.

For libraries, a big benefit is that the digital originals will remain in the collections, much like traditional books, in perpetuity. The digital copies will then be loaned out, just like any other item in the system.

"We will actually be purchasing a book, but it will be a digital file," said Mueller Schultz. "It just won't wear out or get lost."

That could reduce spending on replacement items, which Mueller Schultz estimated at about $500,000 a year in Hennepin County.

Hennepin, which began looking into the eBook phenomenon a year ago, is not the first system in the state to offer such a service.

"Our goal is to have more depth, always, and to build collections," Edson said.

Building usage has been no problem. Edson said Rochester ended last year with 193 eBook checkouts. Halfway through this year there had already been more than 1,200.

"The technology has been around for a while, but this last year or two it's just exploded," Edson said.

Mueller Schultz and others echo that sentiment. But they do not believe electronic downloads will be the death knell for brick-and-mortar libraries anytime soon.

"People think of the library as the collections," Mueller Schultz said. "But we are much more than that. We are where people meet or go to do research or use the computer."