FFS, our local library lets you "borrow" e-books and audiobooks online, you never have to set foot in the building.
If you can get an epub or mobi version of the book you borrowed, you can use Calibre [1] to put it on your e-ink device. You can also email books to your kindle, but I've had mixed success with that.
I do like Calibre, which I've used to get Project Gutenberg books among others onto it.
Hoarding ebooks like physical properties is not a good way to behave.
As someone who deals with e-books for libraries, I feel that frustration, but I also understand where publishers are coming from. They are doing everything they can to hold onto a business model they have been successful with. They also have authors to deal with, who have been successful with the same model and control the production of the product, to some extent.
That said, I suspect many libraries would be willing to license e-books like they license journal content: on an all access subscription model.
The smug overconfidence ("ffs"?) of your reply tells me that many who are spreading the good word about public libraries are overestating their offerings. (But then again, others are ignorant that ebooks exist at public libraries so maybe all of the blind spots from both sides evens out.)
The caveat you're leaving out is that the public libraries have a limited ebook catalog.
I'll use Atlanta GA public libary as an example. It's a major city with a decent sized library.
Look at the Michael Chabon ebooks available from their public library:
http://afpl.ent.sirsi.net/client/default/search/results?qu=c...
The public library certain has all of his books in hardcopy format but for ebooks, it's just 2 titles. Compare with the 13 titles on Oyster:
https://www.oysterbooks.com/author/NakTfeyKUXxFcvzHC2JKFD
Again, look at another popular book, "The Goldfinch":
http://afpl.ent.sirsi.net/client/default/search/results?qu=T...
There is no ebook available at all from Atlanta's library. But Oyster has it:
https://www.oysterbooks.com/book/Kf4mghNUTfnJSiJS758h5V/the-...
The public library works great for those who don't have a specific reading list and would be satisified with "whatever" limited selection they happen to have. (Yes, you can request your public library to buy a new book but that's a separate administrative step and their committee has to review it before adding it to the budget.)
To summarize the disadvantages of ebooks at public libraries mentioned by others:
-- limited selection of titles
-- of the titles the library actually has in the collection, there is a cap on # of simultaneous checkouts from the "virtual inventory". This will result in a wait list for an ebook if it's a popular title
-- the ebooks have a "due date" and the DRM of the ebook will enforce that
-- some libraries only offer DRM epub formats that are not readable on Kindle (unless the user is tech savvy with 3rd party conversion software)
That said, limited availability is a much more complicated problem than budgeting or selection. With print books there's a very well established workflow and discount model. Wholesalers who sell to libraries provide steep (up to 40%) discounts and a very polished workflow for selecting titles (we have standing orders for best-sellers, top authors, big series, etc, that save us hours of work). Ebook vendors don't offer discounts because publishers control prices and the selection model is not nearly as polished.
Additionally, all major publishers have some limitation on their ebooks. For some vendors we pay up to 3x the cost of a retail hardcover and for others we are limited on the number of times the title can check out (26 or 52 times, depending on the vendor). Still others simply sell on a 1 or 5 year lease model. Libraries are still trying to adjust their budget models and workflows to fir these new limitations we've never had to deal with before.
So yes, I love libraries, but it's not nearly as simple as "your library has ebooks" and that's a sad state.
I get it for older books, that makes sense, since at that point most of the books would stop selling and be worth more as a means to get readers to buy the next in the series.
That's the point I'm trying to make. Physical materials, the materials libraries have built their workflows and budgets around, operate using different rules. Wholesalers will provide discounts because libraries buy lots of stuff and so better discounts mean moving more materials and, more importantly, stopping customers from going to another wholesaler. E-books have no wholesaler. They are controlled by the publisher so there is no going to a competitor for better pricing. Thus higher prices (in the realm of 3x the retail hardcover).
That said, publishers have been lowering prices and increasing access slowly. Along with being competitors, libraries are customers, and big ones. Public libraries buy more that 1 billion in materials a year. That's a lot to walk away from because they are "competitors".
My point was just to communicate that though libraries offer value, It's difficult to compete with something like Oyster at the moment.