>This is meant to be somewhat equivalent to the purchasing process for books and other physical media where it's expected that the book will have a fixed lifeti

>This is meant to be somewhat equivalent to the purchasing process for books and other physical media where it's expected that the book will have a fixed lifetime after which it is no longer lendable. I wish the people who say, in this thread and everywhere else library ebook lending is discussed, "Why aren't all ebooks always available to an unlimited number of borrowers?" Publishers can reasonably expect that any physical book will, sooner or later, need replacing. An ebook won't. There is a good debate to be had on whether the Overdrive or Hoopla or some other lending model is more appropriate for ebooks, but that's orthogonal to the above. People need to have a grasp of the basics before discussing anything more detailed.