Downloadable and Lendable Legal Ebooks…Hallelujah!

Last week, a student was lamenting to me that he wished his casebooks were available in a digital format that he could download. This is a familiar woe, and one that I have long shared. While some of the legal publishers are releasing books in digital format, for the most part, they are locked into a web platform that cannot be downloaded, which means that they as basically worthless to my students and to me. These publishers do not seem to realize that people do not yet have internet access 24/7 in all areas of their life.

There has been some progress, as I mentioned in Ebooks and Apps in the Legal Realm (Nov. 30 2010), however, even with the available downloadable titles, there has been little hope for libraries obtaining lendable ebooks. Until April 23rd!

LexisNexis has announced a partnership with Overdrive to create the LexisNexis Digital Library (LDL), which provides access to downloadable and lendable legal eBooks. Per the LexisNexis Press Release on April 24th, the LDL will be customizable to each subscriber, with options including more than 1100 legal titles available from LexisNexis and access to the 700,000 Overdrive titles. The eBooks are compatible with “Windows® PC, Mac®, iPod®, iPhone®, iPad®, Kindle™ (U.S. only), Sony® Reader, NOOK™, Android™, BlackBerry® and Windows® Phone.” A recent Library Journal article reported:

Among the decisions the librarian can make…are the length of the checkout period (from 7-180 days), whether books can be renewed, and whether there is a maximum checkout quantity at one time.

Hallelujah! Someone was listening at the last AALL when I asked the Lexis reps why they did not just partner with Overdrive.

Want to know more? Check out Lexis’s LexisNexis Digital Library page.