eBOUND Canada commissioned Page Two Strategies to conduct a report on the number of Canadian titles available in print and digital formats in Canadian public libraries.
Page Two interviewed staff at ten libraries across the country, as well as representatives from five Canadian publishing houses, to assess the availability of Canadian titles in Canadian libraries, and to engender a more comprehensive understanding of the constraints facing publishers and librarians in making Canadian books available to the reading public.
The libraries were sent an aggregated list of 6,429 titles recorded by BookNet Canada as having both print and ebook editions. Using the relevant metadata for title, author, publisher, and ISBN/eISBN, libraries were asked to cross-reference the compiled BookNet Canada list of titles with their own collection catalogues and return two lists: one list including all print titles (and their accompanying metadata) found to have a match in their catalogue, and the other list including all digital or ebook titles.
These two lists were used to perform a gap analysis to assess the number of Canadian titles available at each library, in print and/or digital format. The report sheds light on the current gaps in Canadian library collections, and offer suggestions as to ways that publishers and library staff can work together to increase the number of Canadian books available to public library users.