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I don't see how they can 'eliminate the need to deal with various ebook formats.'
Many titles are only available in PDF because the layout is very significant (computer books, art books etc.), or because they use scripts that are not supported well by the current ePub/mobi reading systems (e.g. Chinese, Arabic, Hindi).
Conversely, many titles are not available as PDF because there's no business case for creating them for sale, much less for lending. So librarians still need to take format into account, they can't just order titles blindly.
There will be a high degree of parity between ePub and Kindle, because nearly all of the former are available in the latter (at least among the participating publishers). I think it's already been established that they won't have to purchase separate licenses for each format.
The Patron Driven Acquisition thing sounds good, though.
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