3M will soon release a major update to its 3M Cloud Library app, which allows public-library patrons across the Twin Cities to check out tens of thousands of e-book titles. (Credit: 3M)
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Borrowing and downloading e-books from the public library was supposed to be easier than checking out physical library books. No driving to the library building, no remembering to return the book by the due date, no lugging around thick hardcovers.

But the process has always been more of a pain.

E-reader fans wanting to borrow “Twilight” or “Hunger Games” faced an assortment of barriers: Lengthy waiting times for popular titles, kludgy electronic tools for borrowing books, and an inability to tap the e-book catalogs from all metro-area library systems.

Now these difficulties are beginning to ease — at least where one major source of library e-books is concerned.

Maplewood-based 3M, which markets its 3M Cloud Library e-book-lending technology to public libraries across the country, is scoring a number of milestones this summer in its underdog battle against market leader OverDrive.

3M is about to release a radically redesigned version of its smartphone and tablet app to replace the current clunky version. A Google Android version of the app is due in the next few weeks with an Apple iOS set to follow soon thereafter. But the 3M technology doesn’t work on popular Amazon Kindle e-book readers.

Still, Twin Cities library-card holders can use the 3M Cloud Library app at no cost to access e-book catalogs for tens of thousands of electronic books — and their options have been expanding within the past year or so.

This summer, Hennepin County became the last of the eight major metro-area library systems to offer borrowing using 3M’s lending technology. This allows patrons of one library system to be able to browse catalogs and check out e-volumes from any other local system.

Additionally, a Twin Cities public-library consortium called the Metropolitan Library Service Agency (MELSA) maintains its own 3M Cloud Library catalog, and makes it available across the metro area — to about 100 library branches within the eight library systems.

St. Paul Public Library patrons, therefore, have access to MELSA’s 34,000 or so e-books via the 3M app, as well as their city’s own 11,000 volumes via the 3M system.

This is huge, said Kit Hadley, St. Paul Public Library director. What she calls “consortial lending” across metro library systems has long been a core principle for physical books but not with electronic books — until recently.

“Collaboration and cooperation is a founding value of how libraries work” in the Twin Cities, Hadley said, “and now we can bring that value into e-book lending in the metro.”

Wait times are way down for popular books, partly because MELSA makes a point to stock those. The current ratio is about five public-library patrons on a waiting list for any single copy of a popular e-book, which is pretty good, said Sally Lederer, MELSA’s community relations manager.

3M still has an uphill climb against rival OverDrive, which has an exclusive relationship with Amazon.com to permit library e-book checkouts via that popular online storefront for readers using Amazon’s Kindle devices and apps.

3M’s Cloud Library is incompatible with Amazon’s black-and-white Kindle e-readers, and can be installed on Kindle Fire tablets only with some difficulty. 3M said Kindle compatibility is the the top request it gets from users of its lending system, but it has been stymied by its inability to work out an arrangement with Amazon.

Cleveland-based OverDrive also is used across the metro area but it’s not set up to allow book lending across multiple library systems the way 3M Cloud Library is. And 3M may be catching up with its bigger competitor — at least by St. Paul Public Library numbers.

St. Paul library patrons in 2013 checked out OverDrive books at a rate of about 9,000 a month, compared with 3,000 3M Cloud Library titles a month, said John Larson, Digital Library Manager at the St. Paul Public Library.

In 2014, Larson said, that gap narrowed a bit with 10,000 OverDrive books checked out a month on average compared with 4,600 3M Cloud Library books.

So far this year, St. Paul Public Library patrons have checked out a total of 92,000 books from OverDrive and 37,000 books from 3M Cloud Library.

The St. Paul Public Library pays $10,000 a year to use 3M Cloud Library, and in 2013 it spent $75,000 to buy Cloud Library titles for St. Paul patrons. For OverDrive, the St. Paul Public Library pays $15,000 a year but gets a $5,000 credit for purchasing content. In 2013, the library’s content buys totaled about $125,000.

3M is hoping its new app will accelerate book lending. The app’s revised interface makes it easier for library patrons to browse book categories at random, and stumble on books they want to read. Users will be able to sort titles into customized categories, and to flag their favorite kinds of content.

3M workers on Thursday celebrated their app’s imminent release, and the adding of the Hennepin County Library system to their 3M Cloud Library fold, by piling onto a Green Line light-rail train while brandishing iPads, Nook e-book readers and other compatible devices for a short ride to the St Paul Public Library’s Central branch, where doughnuts, bagels and other goodies awaited.

Find Julio Ojeda-Zapata at ojezap.com.

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