Ten Reasons Why CRKN Member Libraries Should Subscribe
to the Canadian Publishers Collection


Although your library is a participant in the original CRKN licence for content from CEL, you have not to date subscribed to the Canadian Publishers Collection. Here are ten reasons why you should consider doing so.
Canadian Publishers Collection: What is it? Where is it?

This riff from CBC radio's popular "This is That" reflects the confusion that applies to Canadian Publishers Collection.

What is it? The 55,000 titles in Canadian Electronic Library fall into two groups: Documents and Books. The 18,000 Books are further segmented by license type. Where the publisher allows for subscription licensing, the titles are included in the Canadian Publishers Collection, which will include about 16,000 titles by year end, with hundreds of new titles added monthly.

Where is it? The CRKN license signed in 2008 with CEL, covering 8129 titles, referred to the licensing of "Canadian Publishers Collection," which was accurate at the time. Since then, however, as shown above, the Books collection has grown to 18,000 titles.None of this new material has been licensed by CRKN, So it is likely that your library does not have these titles in its collection. The most economical way to get it is to subscribe to the Canadian Publishers Collection.  

#1 Canadian Publishers Collection is Very Affordable

FTE-based pricing puts CPC into the budget range of all libraries. The 2015 price list for CRKN members is below. You can calculate the price applicable to your library by multiplying FTE by the $.80/FTE figure for Canadian Publishers Collection.

 

The full CEL Collection (now over 55,000 titles) on the ebrary platform is only $1.10/FTE for CRKN members and even less on desLibris. A discount of about 30% is applied to regular pricing for CRKN members to reflect content already licensed.   

Taking another angle, the list price of the titles in Canadian Publishers Collection is about $700,000. Most CRKN members will pay less than $6,000, which is less than 1% of the total cost of a single-user license to this content. And every title in CPC is licensed for simultaneous multiple-user access.  

in 2015 the CHRC is being merged with the CEL Documents Collection (#3 above,) meaning that it is no longer available as a separate collection. But the same publishers will be polled for new content, so health-policy content will remain in the collection, CHRC will remain identifiable in advanced search options, and MARC records will continue to differentiate/designate CHRC records. So there will be no changes for subscribing institutions.

CEL is offering to OCUL members a reduced price on the "Trade Publishers" subset of CPC. This collection contains 5,000 titles from Trade publishers which have not been previously purchased by OCUL. See this link for a preview.
#2 Canadian Publishers Collection Plus
If you're looking to reduce costs even further while retaining licensed access to all CEL content, consider the new Canadian Publishers Plus option, which provides Books on the ebrary platform and Documents on desLibris. Full description here.

 

#3 It's Not Just About Price

Sound evaluation needs to be based on more than price. In many Canadian academic libraries with other ebrary collections, CEL accounts for disproportionately more usage other collections on the platform.

#4 CEL Proves its Relevance with High Usage Ratings

These are actual figures for the period October 2013 -September 2014 for three academic libraries holding CEL subscriptions.

Large Enrolment (over 30,000 FTE)

 

 

All Titles on ebrary site

Titles used 2013-2014*

All Holdings

167,930

4,369

CEL*

31,013

2,425

CEL Percentage

18%

56%

 

Average Enrolment (~15,000 FTE)   

 

All Titles on ebrary site

Titles used 2013-2014*

All Holdings

88,493

3,101

CEL*

52,000

2,462

CEL Percentage

59%

79%

 

Small Enrolment (under 7,000 FTE)       

 

 

All Titles on ebrary site

Titles used 2013-2014*

All Holdings

169,910

9,900

CEL*

52,000

3,354

CEL Percentage

31%

34%

 

#5 Subscriptions are Cost-effective
While libraries often steer away from subscription license models, citing recurring costs and lack of control, the facts show that subscription is dramatically more cost-effective than purchase. The following figures from CEL sites, show that the cost of CPC per title used is only 1 or 2% of the the cost of perpetual access.

Large Enrolment (over 30,000 FTE)          

 

 

Number

Cost

Cost/Title

Used 4

Cost/Title Used

Purchased Titles

17,3242

$1,473,6862

$85.07

3,078

$479.78

Subscribed Titles in
CEL Publishers Collection

15,0001

$24,0003

$1.61

4,553

$5.27

 

Average Enrolment (~15,000 FTE)           

 

 

Number

Cost

Cost/Title

Used 4

Cost/Title Used

Purchased Titles

8,1292

$597,3352

$68.59

506

$1180.50

Subscribed Titles in
CEL Publishers Collection

15,0001

$11,7833

$0.79

2,462

$4.79

 

Small Enrolment (under 7,000 FTE)         

 

 

Number

Cost

Cost/Title

Used4

Cost/Title Used

Purchased Titles

8,7092

$630,3542

$73.26

1,070

$589.12

Subscribed Titles in
CEL Publishers Collection

15,0001

$5,3093

$0.36

3,354

$1.58

 

1Number of titles in Canadian Publishers Collection September 2014 

2 Total perpetual access titles licensed from ebrary 2008 through 2014

3 Price of Canadian Publishers Collection subscription for the library for 2015.

4 Number of titles used in period October 2013 through September 2014.

 

#6 More than Meets the Eye

Although the Canadian Publishers Collection today contains over 15,000 titles, there are over 3,000 more book titles in CEL which are available only for perpetual access licensing and are therefore not included in the Canadian Publishers Collection. These tend to be frontlist titles issued by the major Canadian scholarly publishers. The preview site here contains over 9,000 titles new for CRKN members, including both subscription and perpetual-access-only titles.  

#7 Buy from a Canadian Source and Save

With Canadian dollar exchange rates declining, there is every good reason to direct purchasing of Canadian content to a Canadian supplier. Perpetual Access licenses to any eligible title in CEL (now over 18,000 titles) may be purchased from CEL. Because all ebook providers operate on prices set by publishers, our prices on these titles are identical to those charged by other vendors, but we invoice in Canadian dollars, providing significant savings. We are also willing to extend discounts on larger purchases, so please use the button below to get a quote. 

#8 The New ebrary Reader

The new ebrary online reader, which has now been activated on most ebrary customer sites, is a dramatic improvement over the original version. The user experience features: Clearer user permissions and information on ebooks for patrons, Intuitive navigation to locate popular features faster, Higher text quality and display options for better readability, Streamlining of tasks such as copy, print, download and in-book search, and Enhanced support for accessibility needs (scheduled for late fall.)  
More details here. 

#9 Discovery Rules

In addition to the free MARC records we supply for catalogue loading, we also provide metadata to a growing number of discovery services. If your library is using one or more of the discovery layers below, you'll be glad to know that they provide (or will be soon providing) metadata for CEL and desLibris collections. For more information, contact your vendor representative.



#10 A Gift fromdesLibris

Closing as we began, we'll explain "How do you say it?" (Which is "day-LEE-bris.")  

 

But more important is "How do you use it?" desLibris.ca is an excellent site for keeping abreast of Canadian content. The site is public, so you can go there to find and download lists of new books in your field of interest, which may or may not be available in CEL collections (if they are excluded from subscription licensing, or if they are forthcoming books, which are in desLibris but not CEL, or if they are among the self-published materials which we will be accepting from library subscribers.)

And here's the gift part:


Every library subscribing to a CEL collection receives a free desLibris librarian admin account, which can be useful in a number of ways, including obtaining MARC records selectively, downloading document PDFs and generating quotes and placing orders for CEL titles. With your CEL subscription you'll receive full information on this new utility. 

Thank you for your time and attention. I hope you've been inspired to add more Canada to your library with CEL.To request a quote or demo or to ask a question, just use the button below.

 

Best regards,
 
  
Bob Gibson
Canadian Electronic Library

 
Canadian Electronic Library / desLibris
info@canadianelectroniclibrary.ca | http://www.deslibris.ca
1-206 Stanley Ave
Ottawa, ON K1M 1P3