Member Communiqué – June 2016
What’s new?
With the AGM and conference season now behind us, we look ahead to a busy summer with more planned growth of existing services. Happily, all of our activities are backed by the amazing Co-op support and systems teams who enable us to incubate, diversify, and better serve members. Last year, we resolved 4,300 member service support queries and members consistently report very high satisfaction with the quality of that support: what a tremendous cooperative community resource our systems and support teams are!
A few highlights since our Spring Communiqué:
- Thank you to all members and partners in BC, Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Atlantic Canada who met and learned with us, and also provided feedback, advice, perspective and support during conference season!
- Revisions to Canada’s Copyright Act received royal assent last week, meaning Canadians with print disabilities will have broken through another barrier to access the titles they choose to read through nnels.ca or other platforms – more options and choice!
- Last Tuesday being National Aboriginal Day, we are extra proud to make the Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC) reports available as an open access download via the National Network for Equitable Library Service (NNELS), in our ongoing role as service partner to NNELS. Some of you may have additionally have patrons participating in the TRC Reading Challenge.
Comings and Goings
Since our last communiqué, it has been our pleasure to welcome two new member organizations (Vancouver Island University and Kwantlen Polytechnic University) and we welcome four individuals to their new positions as directors of member organizations:
- Fiona Bruce – Fort Nelson Public Library, Managing Librarian
- Danielle Chagnon – Direction générale de la Grande Bibliothèque (Province of Quebec)
- Glenda Newsted – Kootenay Library Federation, Director
- Cathy Ching – South Central Regional Library
We recently welcomed Harris McKay to our Systems team as a Co-op summer student courtesy of SFU and a grant from the BC Innovation Council. Here until the end of August, Harris is helping us catch up on a number of upgrades and assisting us with some documentation. About his Co-op position far, he says, “Everyone here is remarkably friendly, and I have learned an incredible amount in my short time here thus far! Every single day I feel like I get half of a course’s worth of useful info in my head. I’m sure I’ll continue to have a great time working here!”
Welcome to the Co-op community, everyone!
Annual General Meeting 2016
Thanks again to all members who participated both in the election of Directors and in the AGM itself on Friday, June 17. As communicated previously, all motions and resolutions passed unanimously. For more about election results, please see our post-election news release.
Report from ebook Summit 2016
This year’s eBook Summit is available from beginning to end as a YouTube playlist.
In Part One, Christina deCastell, Director of Collections and Technology at Vancouver Public Library, talks about eBooks from an International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) perspective, and what she learned from discussions with international publishers. She concludes with a discussion about what she thinks librarians should be thinking about as they license eBooks.
In Part Two, Diana Davidson, Director of Alberta’s Public Library Service Branch, discusses the Branch’s partnership with the Alberta Book Publishers Association to acquire and distribute eBooks through Alberta public libraries, set to launch in December 2016.
In Part Three, Deb Koep of West Vancouver Memorial Library discusses recent trends in eBook usage in Canada. Based on data from 2014, ebook usage has increased 332% in BC. Deb tells us who’s borrowing eBooks and eAudiobooks and what’s popular.
In Part Four, Chris Koth of North Vancouver City Library talks about the library’s experience with 3M/Bibliotheca’s Cloud Library. Next, Virginia McCreedy of Port Moody Public Library, a member of the Co-op’s consortial selection committee for OverDrive, discusses recent collection statistics and OverDrive’s “Request to Library” feature that was made available in March. Finally, Nadine White from the Whistler Public Library describes her library’s experience with Hoopla.
In Part Five, Sam Mills of VPL talks about implementing Archambault’s MaBiblioNumerique French e-book platform, as well as the research she has conducted into lending platforms for self-published books including Indyreads, Smashwords, Odilo, and OverDrive. Rina Hadziev talks about GVPL’s experiences with Biblioboard and their author programs (and how GVPL librarians were finally able to say “yes” to self-published authors who wanted their books to be in the library).
As always, demand for digital content from libraries is increasing faster than library budgets, and we appreciate so many people participating in the eBook summit to share information and ideas.
Co-op Radio Tonight!
Tune in to CFRO 100.5 FM at 20:00 Pacific tonight to hear a feature segment on our Co-op! If you miss the live program, you’ll be able to listen us anytime later by visiting the Each for All archives and clicking on the link for June 28.
