The results of the Library Board’s 2017 Strategic Planning Community survey clearly indicate that our community sees opportunities for the HPL to improve the Library’s digital collections offerings. 48% of respondents reported being satisfied with the ease of use of our current eBook site and 44% were satisfied with the selection of eBooks available for download. These two items had the lowest satisfaction rating out of the 14 service areas surveyed.
As highlighted in the February presentation to the Library Board, 75% of survey respondents identified recently published books that they didn’t have to wait for and a wider range of eBooks as key drivers that would encourage them to use the Library more.
In 2017, digital circulation represented 22% of borrowing. In the first quarter of 2018, we’ve seen a 19% increase in usage of HPL’s Overdrive collection. We’ve implemented a digital collections strategy increasing curation of the Library’s digital content and focusing on a key digital collection each quarter in conjunction with the publication of What’s Happening.
With the Digital Collections project, we want to further leverage our positive momentum. In response to the community survey and usage metrics, we would like to offer customers new eLending options and conduct a broad review of HPL’s digital offerings. Firstly, we will be adding an Express eBooks CloudLibrary and Kanopy to our digital collections. For the launch of the Express eBook collection, we will be mirroring the model that the Ottawa Public Library very successfully launched in February of last year. Ottawa customers have been very responsive to quick access to the bestselling titles in the collection and Ottawa has seen reductions in wait times for other eBook content as a result. Kanopy is a digital platform that provides access to classic films, international cinema and documentaries. Both platforms will offer HPL new opportunities to explore different lending models and products. With the continual changing landscape of consumer technology and user behaviours we would like to introduce new choices to explore opportunities to meet and exceed customer expectation. In conjunction with the rollout of these new offerings, we will conduct a full review of all digital collections to evaluate usage patterns and how best we can direct our efforts moving forward.
The timing of this project will also be helpful in aligning our efforts with the proposed Ontario Digital Public Library project announced in the recent budget.
Pending Board approval, the Digital Collections project will be implemented during 2018. We will provide the Board with an update on the impact of the project upon its completion.