The Initiative
The Canadian Urban Libraries Council / Conseil des Bibliothèques Urbaines du Canada (CULC/CBUC) has created an opportunity for all public libraries to participate in a Canada-wide digital reading program. The initiative is similar to a “one book, one city” initiative, but on a national scale and in digital format. It will run for four weeks, from January 1 to January 31, 2021. This is the second One eRead Canada; over 300 libraries across the country participated in 2019 for Glass Beads. We are excited to feature a bilingual book this year, and to be working with Penguin Random House Canada and Libre Expressions to make this possible.
The Circulation Model
Vi will be available from January 1–31 in eBook and eAudio across all platforms, (Cantook Station, CloudLibrary, Overdrive, Prêt numérique), with simultaneous access at a cost of $0.35 per circulation, with $0.25 cents going to the publisher for royalties and $0.10 cents for platform fees. The book is also already available to readers with print disabilities via CELA and NNELS.
Support Materials
Communication & Promotion
The most important message of this program is that libraries are bringing people together to read / listen to a single title in both English and French (in digital format) at the same time and engage with each other over their thoughts and feelings about the book and how it impacted them.
Books are an important means of connecting and understanding the world around us and the importance of access to digital content has never been so clear as we’ve seen through this pandemic.
Libraries want to work with the big publishers to establish fair pricing models that can benefit everyone and ensure equitable access to digital content such as eBooks and eAudiobooks.
Logo & Hashtags
Please use the logo on any materials you create, and the hashtag(s) in any social media posts/tweets.
- light background – jpeg
- light background – eps
- dark background – jpeg
- dark background – eps
- transparent – png
- transparent – eps
- The bilingual hashtag for the program is: #1eReadLivrelCanada
- Other hashtags you may want to add depending on the content of the post/tweet: #CanLit
Creative Assets
We have created several graphics that can be used by your library that are suitable for online and print media.
There are jpegs as well as access to the vector files. If you wish to add your library’s logo to the jpegs, there are instructions on how to use a free software solution called CANVA that will let you do so.
Media Kit
Includes Media Release, Social Media Messages and Videos by Kim Thúy.
We have also drafted a blog for internal communication to staff and suggested social media messaging that can accompany the short videos created by Kim Thúy.
School Kit
This is an opportunity to reach out to your contacts at local high schools to let them know about the program and includes a slide that teachers can add to their online classrooms.
Discussion Guide
There is a wonderful discussion guide available which includes information about the book, author, read-a-likes, other books and discussion questions. We are grateful to Laval Public Library, Longueuil Public Library and Amnesty International Book Club for providing us with such a rich resource.
Evaluation
This initiative is an opportunity to demonstrate the positive impact of public libraries and advocate for better access to eContent. To do so, we will measure the immediate and residual impacts of the program as well as the correlation between circulation and sales. More information will be provided to participating libraries.
If you have not received the template for evaluation, please contact Heather McDonald heather.mcdonald@lpl.ca.
Questions?
Email heather.mcdonald@lpl.ca or info@culc.ca
