Taking a step forward to kill the printed books, Amazon announced that its “Kindle Library Lending” service, which will allow to borrow e-books from around 11,000 public libraries across the United States, would be available from later this year.

The upcoming service will allow users to make and save digital notes in the borrowed e-book. The saved notes will be available the next time the user borrows or purchases the e-book. But, the notes will automatically vanish when any other user will borrow or buy that book.

E-book borrow service is already available at Kindle’s rivals such as Barnes & Noble’s Nook, the Sony reader and the Kobo reader. But, Kindle users are so far lagging.

Bobbi L. Newman, manager at the Columbia-based Richland County Public Library, said that Amazon’s move was a proof that libraries were an important player in the e-book business.

Speaking on the topic, Newman added, “We’ve been waiting for Amazon to play ball with libraries since they came out with the Kindle. Even Amazon can’t overlook us anymore.”

It is more convenient to borrow an e-book as it can be downloaded from home, school etc. Moreover, borrowing is less expensive than buying. However, two major publishers, viz. Macmillan and Simon & Schuster, have still not permitted their e-books to be available via libraries.