1. French ebook acquisitions at
the University of Ottawa,
Canada
Tony Horava
Associate University Librarian
(Collections)
ALA Annual
June 26, 2010

2. University of Ottawa – quick facts
• North America’s largest bilingual university
• Located in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city
• One of Canada’s top 10 research universities – this year we
were admitted as the 125th member of ARL
• Students and faculty from 150 countries
• In Fall 2009 : 37,922 students enrolled
– 32,630 undergraduates
– 5,292 graduates
• 9 Faculties: Arts, Social Sciences, Science, Engineering, Law,
Management, Education, Health Sciences and Medecine
• Four libraries ( Arts & Sciences, Health Sciences, Law,
Management)

3. Key library statistics
• Acquisition budget: 14.6M (2010/11)
• Staff: 162 FTE (42 Librarians and 120 Support
staff)
• Print journal subscriptions - 6,842
• Print books (volume equivalent)– 2,140,245
• Ejournal subscriptions - 20,877
• Ebooks – 366,999
• Research databases – 528
• Books acquired 2009-10: 44,457
• About 20% of the library collection is in French;
we prioritize French books.

4. French European ebooks at a
glance*
• About 60,000 ebooks in French language available
• By way of contrast: there are about 66,500 print books
published each year in France (half of which are new titles),
and about 620,000 books available in print.
• Ebooks represent 0.5% of revenue in the book industry
• In 2007, the Bibliotheque Nationale de la France, the Centre
Nationale du Livre and the Syndicat Nationale du Livre
implemented a digitization program – 2.6M euros in funding
• About 23,000 books digitized; only a small number currently
available. Why?
• Rights negotiations with authors are slow; consumer expect
lower prices; small catalogue compared to print titles; DRM
issues; no unified commercial platform; no tax exemption
(compared to print books)
*from Documentaliste – Sciences de l’Information v. 47 (2) 2010

5. Challenges re French European
ebooks
• Cultural practices and business models are different
from North America
• The print book is still king; long cultural tradition and
prestige.
• Ebooks are sold by publishers to individuals for personal
use (eg. Via Gallica – eleven publishers to date;
approximately 25K titles available)
• Ebooks licensing to institutions are far behind the
practices in the journal industry, eg Cairn collection
• North American licensing models for ebooks haven’t had
any traction in France. Why?

6. Challenges re French European
ebooks (2)
• Lack of standardization re ebook formats and distribution channels
• Publishers are afraid of losing control of their intellectual property and
would rather not use intermediaries (such as booksellers or agents)
• Conflict due to differences in copyright and intellectual property
regimes - French copyright law is different from US or Canadian
legislation
• The successful lawsuit against Google by French publishers is a case in
point – cultural & political concerns
• Local hosting – this is problematic since publishers are afraid of losing
control of their works.
• University presses see ebooks as a way to boost print revenues,
rather than as a product in itself (Google Books)
• French publishers very unlikely to accept an ebook license based on
North American models.
• MARC records are a challenge, ie French subject headings required.

7. French-Canadian ebooks
• In Quebec, publishers are prohibited from selling books
directly to institutions; bookstores play a prominent cultural
and political role as book distributor in society.
• Publisher acceptance of key standards regarding ebooks and
institutional licensing.
• We have acquired 1,540 French-Canadian titles via the
‘Canadian Publishers Collection’ (a subscription product from
Gibson Library Connections) which provides approximately
11,000 scholarly monographs in e-format
• 53 titles from 2010; other titles date from 1959-2009
• This includes various university presses: Les Presses de
l’Université du Montréal; Les Presses de l’Université du
Québec; Les Presses de l’Université de Laval; Les Presses de
l’Université d’Ottawa, Les Editions XYZ.

8. French-Canadian ebooks
• Available on ebrary platform ; MARC records provided
(including French subject headings)
• Individual titles in the Canadian Publishers Collection
can be purchased (perpetual access) depending on
publisher
• Our interest is in local hosting, via Scholars Portal ebook
platform (provincial consortium infrastructure)
• This platform offers federated searching across all
ebooks (over 240,000 from many publishers such as
Springer, Oxford, Cambridge, Open Content Alliance,
etc)

9. The Future?
• There is a great divergence between the French-
Canadian and French-European book industry.
• Greater acquisition of French monographs in e-format
will depend on various cultural, business, and
technological developments in France.
• Risk & opportunity assessment by French publishers
• How the French address these issues will shape their
role in the digital economy (in relation to books)
• We are quite keen to acquire ebooks from France, once
they are available and can meet our basic requirements
for licensing, access, and integration into our systems.

10. Thanks!
Tony Horava
University of Ottawa
thorava@uottawa.ca
(613) – 562-5800 ext3645.