Building an eBook Collection That Torontonians Will Love
Torontonians’ love affair with books isn’t news to those of
us who work at the library.
As the world’s busiest urban public library system, Toronto Public Library circulated 33 million items last year alone. Our customers borrow all sorts of
things: books (in various formats and
languages), magazines, DVDs, CDs, musical scores and more.
One format, in particular, has experienced a
huge surge in demand. I’m sure you have
all guessed by now that I’m referring to eBooks. Last year, customers borrowed 523,270 eBooks – a whopping
103% increase over 2010 circulation. It’s
likely that this upward trend will
continue.
Our eBook collection has evolved tremendously since 1999,
when it mainly consisted of streamed reference and academic titles. Since then,
the selection of titles available to libraries has greatly expanded and we’re
now able to offer our public both fiction and nonfiction titles in a variety of
formats, reading levels and languages.
Collecting “everything” is a tall order and it will take
many years to build an electronic collection that has the richness and depth of
our print collection. We monitor
bestseller lists, publisher lists, lists of classics and review media to find
titles that we think will be of interest to you.
Our customers are encouraged to make eBook title suggestions
through our Answerline service. This has been a valuable way to discover what our eBook customers like to read
and to get feedback on the collection as a whole.
Although we'd like to fulfill all our customer requests
for eBook titles, this is not always possible. The main issue is that the supply of eBook titles available to libraries
is still quite limited despite the great strides that have been made since the
early days of eBooks. This issue is
clearly explained in this New York Times article.
Libraries around the world are actively working with
publishers to try and find a solution that is mutually beneficial to both
parties. If you'd like to find out
more about what Toronto Public Library and other Canadian libraries are doing
to help improve access to eBooks, check out this summary from the Canadian Urban
Libraries Council.
I hope you will take some time to look at our eBook
collection and let us how we can improve the content in order to create a
collection that Torontonians will love. Please sound off in the comments below.
What do Torontonians like to read in electronic format?
The short answer is: Everything! Check out the Recently Returned section in
OverDrive to get a peek at what people have just
finished reading. We have some
terrific titles in our collection.
Below are some of this month’s hot titles. Visit our Downloads & eBooks page for more titles – and to learn how to get started using our eCollection. Please enjoy!
21 thoughts on “Building an eBook Collection That Torontonians Will Love”
I would love to see more specified genre fiction. Myself I’m a complete sucker for reading horror novels and have to say I was a bit let down by the selection. I’m not certain how you g about choosing the e-books, but having someone who is aware of the trends in genre fiction and making them available to the greater public would be amazing.
Plus even more branching out and connecting various databases, so there is even more content. i.e. become partners with archive.org and openlibrary.org.
Both Smashwords dot com and bookviewcafe dot com have had recent posts about making books by independent and small publishers available to libraries. I hope you can find a way to explore these smaller distributors and fit them into your services. I’m finding good books and better prices at both these distributors, in particular.
Hi James,
Thanks for your insightful comments. I agree that our genre fiction needs to be built up further. Feel free to pass along specific author, title or series requests to our Answerline service and they will forward your suggestions to the Collection Development Department for ordering.
We make every effort to fulfill requests for specific eBook titles but, as I mentioned in my blog post, several major publishers do not make their eBooks available to libraries at the moment. Hopefully, this situation will change in the near future.
I’d love to see more Canadian authors, big and small. But what I’d really love is to see the new eBooks list divided by genre. The buying seems to go in waves, and sometimes it seems like it’s just pages and pages of kids books.
I would also like to see more genre fiction. Another great thing would be to add older titles which may be difficult to get in hard copy. I also have noticed that the library either doesn’t have all the books in a series or a book is only in the reference collection and can’t be borrowed. For example, I recently wanted to read Stuart Wood’s “Will Lee” series but the first book in the series isn’t available to borrow. If I can’t get the first one then I’m not going to borrow the others.
Hi Phil,
Thanks for taking the time to comment on this post. Smashwords’ recent announcement about their new Library Direct service is good news for TPL and other libraries looking to acquire indie eBooks for their collections. This is something TPL is very interested in.
At the moment, the Library Direct service is only available to libraries that host and manage their own checkout systems (very few libraries can afford to develop their own eBook platforms). TPL is currently working with the Canadian Urban Libraries Council to develop an eBook platform that will allow Canadian libraries to purchase a wider variety of eBooks than what is currently available through vendors like OverDrive. Our eBook collection is sure to improve with time as we are given access to a wider variety of content to purchase from.
Hi Rachel,
Thanks for taking the time to comment on this post. You are not alone in your love of Canadian authors – some of the hottest titles in our OverDrive collection are Canadian books.
Collection Development staff make purchasing Canadian eBooks (both fiction and nonfiction) a priority. If you have a specific title or author you would like to read in eBook format, please contact our Answerline service and our staff will send your request to the Collection Development Department for ordering. We make every effort to fulfill requests for specific eBook titles but, as I mentioned in my blog post, some publishers do not make their eBooks available to libraries.
I agree that there is MUCH room for improvement with the genre/subject categories for both the fiction and nonfiction in OverDrive, OneClick Digital, etc. Unfortunately, TPL is not able to control where eBooks display under the subject categories or how newly purchased material is listed. We are also unable to add new categories. The reason for this is that the browsing, searching, check-in and check-out functions all currently take place on the vendor websites (OverDrive, Safari, OneClick Digital, etc) and not the library website.
TPL is currently working with the Canadian Urban Libraries Council to develop an eBook platform for Canadian libraries that will allow us to gain control over some of above mentioned functions. The issues, that you rightly identified as problematic, can be rectified once the new platform is in place.
Hi Hania,
Thanks for taking the time to comment on this post. Feel free to pass along specific author or title requests to our Answerline service at any time and they will forward your suggestions to the Collection Development Department for ordering. We are happy to order both new and backlist fiction for our collection.
The problem of incomplete series is one that crops up quite frequently with respect to customer feedback about eBooks. This issue is frustrating for our customers who want to read a series in its entirety and for our staff who want to be able to purchase the complete series. In the vast majority of the cases, as is the case with the Stuart Woods series you mentioned, the publisher has selectively made the titles in a series available to libraries. As I mentioned in my blog post, supply issues pose the greatest challenge in terms of eBook collection development. We are still talking to the publishers about this issue and we hope to see improvements soon.
just wanted to say that i’m looking forward to the new platform you are working on. i would borrow more ebooks but browsing in overdrive is so terrible!
thank you 🙂
oh, another suggestion: more graphic novels (i’m not sure if you have any available for lending at the moment, or if any publishers make them available to libraries). thanks!
Love your ebook section. could I humbly suggest you add my most recent book to that list – Memories of the Beach: Reflections on a Toronto Childhood (dundurn press) as a great source of info on Toronto in the 1930’s and ’40’s and of the influence of public libraries on the life of a young girl. Thanks from Lorraine O’Donnell Williams.
Hi Lorraine,
Thank you for your feedback. We were able to purchase Memories of the Beach through OverDrive. Copies will be available for downloading within a day or so.
I hope you will continue to find good eBooks to read in our collection.
Hi Bunnyhero,
Thank you for your feedback. We are looking forward to the improvements in browsing and searching as well.
Hi Bunnyhero,
TPL would love to purchase more graphic novels in eBook format but the vast majority of the titles are currently unavailable to public libraries. We are hopeful that this situation will change in the future.
That being said, we have been able to purchase some titles in this format. For example, “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco was recently added to our OverDrive collection and is circulating very well.
Thanks again for taking the time to give us your feedback.
Just want to mention that publishers restricting libraries from buying ebooks are doing a huge disservice to the vision-impaired population. ebooks have been a huge boon for my mother, who can read neither regular not large print books anymore. But her ebook reader makes it possible (for all but a few titles) to magnify the type, and of course expanding the audio selection from what she can get through CNIB is terrific. When publishers force vision-impaired people to do without because they can’t afford to buy all the books they’d ‘read’, it’s unfair and perhaps even discriminatory. I find this aspect of the ebook market is often overlooked but it’s real and I suspect growing.
Hi Janet,
You make an excellent point. eBooks and eAudiobooks do offer more reading options for people with both visual and physical impairments. Canadian libraries will continue to address this important issue with publishers to ensure that the widest selection of eBook content is made available to libraries.
I read through the New York Times article and I understand where the publisher is coming from (although some of their comments were pretty idiotic, eg. “How will they know that 26 borrowings is too low until they try it?”, when I’ve seen consist waitlists in the near thousands).
They fear revenue loss because there is no incentive to buy an e-book (it’s not like you can put it up on your bookshelf after you’re done reading it, it doesn’t physically exist). While I still borrow paper books, the recent gift of an e-reader makes it far more convenient to borrow e-books. I personally would not mind paying a small fee (either by the book or annually) for the priviledge of borrowing new or best selling e-books. This can be a simple pilot project whereby no one loses – library or publisher.
And I doubt these comments will reach publishers but what about piracy? I can borrow these books from the library or I can find them illegally online.
I forgot to mention that Amazon actually has a lending library for Kindle owners (a device that doesn’t work with Canadian libraries, but that’s another issue) that can be accessed for a fee.
Despite the restrictions imposed by some publishers, I’m finding a lot of first-rate e-books at TPL. I’m also finding very interesting things out in the digital world. Some of this I discover through the TPL web site including the blogs, but most I discover on my own. I’m sure I miss many things that TPL staff learn about through their work and personal interests.
During the last few years, the TPL web site has done a great job promoting branch programs. The information is interesting and visually attractive, and has raised the profile of branch programming. I think it’s time to shift the balance on the home page, so that more space and visual attractiveness is provided to promote the position of the public library as a public space in the digital world, just as it has been a public space in the traditional print world. Here are just a few ideas to put on the table for the web site:
1. Add a few sections to the main page of the web site:
– One section for something from the world of books, reading, and digital literacy. This could include things such as support for paren’ts who want to help their children develop reading skills; links to information on the web about developments in the digital world, including ebooks and ways people are developing skills to be creators of content. This should have the kind of visual appeal and level of content that the “What’s New” section has.
– One section for something about Toronto, with links to resources related to it. For example, the Picasso exhibit at the AGO; MARS research and development initiative; proposed developments on King St. West
– One section for an example from TPL resources that many people don’t know about, such as pictures with direct links to items in the Digital Collections; excerpts from and direct links to articles in the Magazines and Periodicals Databases. This could include more digitization and direct promotion of the Special Collections such as Obsorne, Merril, Arthur Conan Doyle, and could use the collections as anchors to ongoing interest in children’s books, science fiction/fantasy/virtual reality, and mysteries.
2. Consider expanding the mandate of the Virtual Reference Library, to make it a site where public libraries can work together to develop an expanded Reading and Digital Literacy access point to the web. In the meantime, enhance the “Books, Video, Research & More” page.
All of this could help TPL achieve two strategic goals: “Grow A City of Readers” and “Inspire, Support and Catalyze a City of Innovators, Entrepreneurs and Creators of All Ages”. Toronto is home to the head offices of Kobo, which is competing in the world ebook market. The public library, though its web site, programs, and collections, can directly help Toronto and Ontario be, and be seen as, major players in the digital publishing world.
It’s an exciting time for libraries. As a retired TPL staff member, I look forward to following how things develop.
I am a regular user of the OverDrive collection. The growth of the collection both in size and diversity has been wonderful. I just learned from the introduction to this page that I can suggest new books through the Answerline service. It would be really useful to have a link on the OD home page so that suggestions can be posted easily without having to travel too far from the OD page. The AnswerLine page does not really encourage suggestions in terms of new e=books.
The e-book content is too hard to access. Many outside accounts are needed and must be clicked through to download. Also, there are compatibility problems between the files and the different devices. (I have to be able to download anything onto my first generation iPod Touch.) The site ought to cleaned up to that e-content is just a couple of clicks away for everyone.