The West Vancouver Memorial Library says it’s the first library in Canada to let cardholders borrow a Kindle.

The municipal library has purchased six of the e-book readers developed by Amazon.com.

On July 12, as part of an e-reader pilot project, it began loaning out five of them for three weeks at a time.

Sarah Felkar, the West Vancouver library assistant who’s spearheading the program, told the Straight that the Kindles are part of a “fact-finding mission” to see how feasible it is to lend out e-books.

“We are moving into sort of a digital era, and we wanted a chance to show our patrons what’s out there, how easy it is, how nice it is to see these devices, which might be a little bit intimidating otherwise,” Felkar said by phone today (July 13).

Each Kindle comes stocked with 50 titles, including Margaret Atwood’s Writing With Intent, Nick Hornby’s An Education, and Annabel Lyon’s The Golden Mean.

As of this afternoon, library users had placed 18 holds on the devices.

According to Felkar, the library will use the feedback it gets from the pilot project to decide whether to stock more Kindles or other e-book readers.

While the library is making its first foray into the world of e-books, Felkar said its collection of print books isn’t going anywhere.

“You don’t need to plug print books in,” she noted.

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