Online retailer Amazon announced that Kindle owners would be allowed to borrow e-books from more than 11,000 public libraries across the US, starting later this year.

Announcing the upcoming service, Amazon's Kindle Director Jay Marine, "We're excited that millions of Kindle customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from their local libraries."

Amazon's Kindle Library Lending will be of great help to students as it will allow them to make and save digital notes in the borrowed e-book.

The notes will appear the next time the user borrows or buys the e-book. But, the concerned notes will not appear to other users will borrow or purchase that book.

Users of Barnes & Noble's Nook, the Kobo reader, the Sony Reader, and laptops as well as smartphones have long been enjoying the ability to borrow e-book from local libraries. But, Kindle users were lagging.

The use of e-books is reporting an unprecedented increase in popularity, thanks to growing sales of e-readers. Last month, the New York Public Library announced that it recorded a year-on-year increase of 36 per cent in the use of its e-books.