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The Best of BC Books, Digital Library Collection

May 13th, 2009

The ABPBC is engaged in a project to assemble and release a selection of its members’ significant non-fiction titles available to the libraries in BC in digital form under an imaginative new program.

This project addresses a number of the recommendations in the strategic plan, including:

The goal of the project is to leverage the strong demand from libraries for digital books to provide BC publishers with the incentive to go digital. The venture will serve as a demonstration project for both publishers and libraries. Publishers will be able to use it to better understand the costs and issues involved in offering books in digital form for libraries. They will also use the digital source files arising from the project to provide their titles to awareness services like Amazon and Google, as well as to other digital book distribution channels worldwide.

There are over 4 million registered library users in all sectors (university, college, public) in BC. If this offer is accepted on a province-wide basis, all will benefit from having access to a large body of regional material in digital form.

ABPBC has presented the project to the three major library purchasing consortia in the province who are now considering the proposal and negotiating on price and content access terms. The consortia involved are:

Once a province-wide content license has been negotiated, ABPBC and its member publishers will then provide the collection in digital form under license to any ebook aggregator interested in offering the collection to libraries, both in BC and throughout the world. This will permit libraries a choice of platforms on which to view the content.

The first collection to be made available will be BC non-fiction: titles in travel, biography and autobiography, history and social sciences related to the province.

Gibson Publishing Connections is a service company formed by Bob Gibson to offer assistance to Canadian publishers in building digital distribution capabilities.

ABPBC Member Publishers Participating in The Best of BC Books Digital Library Collection:

• Anvil Press