Smartphones have been able to display and purchase e-books since the arrival of reading apps such as Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iBooks. Now an app affiliated with thousands of public libraries is bringing browsing, downloading and displaying e-book loans to handsets, too.

The free OverDrive Media Consolefor iPhone and Android taps into the digital collections of e-books, audiobooks, music and video titles offered by 13,000 public libraries, schools, colleges, and universities. Overdrive sells digital media to libaries, and also handles storing the files and distributing them to patrons. Libraries buy the in-copyright digital books like they do print books -- they can loan one "copy" at a time to a patron, with Overdrive keeping track of the length of the loans and access to each title. Overdrive has 400,000 e-books, audiobooks, albums, and videos available to libraries, though any individual library's collection will depend on which titles it has bought.

Previously, patrons have been able to download Overdrive titles on a computer, and then read the e-books on the computer or by side-loading them onto a compatable e-reader, such as those made by Sony. The Overdrive app handles all of those steps on smartphones without any side-loading.

Inside the app, a "Get Books" feature guides users to find their local library's digital catalog so they can browse available e-books. After entering a library card number, a user can check out and download e-books directly to his phone. The first time the app is used to open one of the books, the user also has to register it with an account from Adobe, which provides the digital rights management software used in the copyrighted books.

After the loan period -- up to 21 days -- expires, the app will no longer let the user open the file, and automatically "returns" the e-book to the library so it can be checked out by somebody else. (The Richland County Public Library in South Carolina made this videoto explain the process to patrons.)