Well, I'm looking forward to the change - although I have used library ebooks for some time, once I moved to the kindle from the PRS-505, it was rarely worth the effort.
I'm certain this will impact wait-times, but it will open library content fairly seamlessly to far more users, and frankly, that's what libraries are for, so I'm unlikely to cry a river.
In a perfect world, this increased utilization of libraries would lead to an increase in funding. I know, hollow laugh, right? But it's just slightly possible that an increase in ebook usage, which, let's be honest, is a bit of a premium product, may in turn raise the library's profile with the folks who are paying the taxes and allocating the budget.
Now I'm not saying that folks with money don't use libraries, or, as the Simpsons put it "Kids, a library is where homeless people go to have BMs," but more widespread usage of library resources by folks with a higher socio-economic status may lead to more funding purely from selfish wants, as opposed the the ever popular but insufficiently funded cry of "think of the children."
Or, it could do nothing at all, and libraries will just have to decide how to allocate funding based on the demand of ebooks vs pbooks. I don't know, maybe their current allocation is ok - after all, folks who can spring for a ebook reader generally (not necessarily individually) have a few shekels of disposable income to buy their own books.
In that vein, I can daydream about a nice ebook donation system, that I'd love to have Overdrive implement. If there's a book you want, but the waiting list is a mile long, buy the library a copy through overdrive and get bumped to the top of the waiting list so you get to read your copy first. At the end of the year, the library runs a report and sends out tax receipts for the total you gifted that year. If they don't have a title, you can put a pending buy, which the library can then review for their collection policies, and if approved, the buy goes through and you have the usual 3-day hold to pick it up first.
I could see this working quite well, depending on the overdrive cost. Even if it's 20-30% more, you get to make a donation, read a book, and get a tax break all at the same time.
What's not to like? Other than 1000s of copies of James Patterson books.
