Boosting the Canadian Books Catalog

Michael Jensen | 03/27/2009 | Digitization

Back in the early 90s, two colleagues and I initiated what would become the AAUP Online Catalog, beginning as a Gopher site and evolving into a Web page for books published by presses belonging to the Association of American University Presses.

The idea had many goals: collecting our diverse array of books in a centralized location would facilitate discovery (this was pre-Google); allowing Presses who did not have technical staff to begin to tiptoe into the Internet; promoting the scholarly output of the member presses; and lots more.

It was a success for its time—though there were substantial roadblocks, because most small- to mid-sized presses still didn’t have databases, or still were led by directors who hoped “this internet thing” was “just a fad.”

There was a small listing fee per book (under a dollar), depending on the amount of work required to standardize the data, and many presses couldn’t figure out if this was a marketing expense, or overhead, or what. Nonetheless, a majority of the AAUP membership had books in this “union catalog,” and traffic was substantial (for the time).

And then along came Amazon, and Google, and the desire for individual presses to have direct control over their own Web look and feel. The drive to have a collective presence waned, and the project was mothballed.

Interestingly, discussions are beginning again within the AAUP community about reviving it, especially as now most of the presses have fairly straightforward standards-based data feeds, cover images are already online, etc.—the whole process would be much more simple, and the benefits fairly clear. The scholarly publishing universe is fairly small in relative terms, and the kind of collective promotion made possible by a collective online catalog seem increasingly obvious to many—especially if the price is low).

The AECB publishes Rights Canada, its joint paper-based catalog, and has an online catalog/database. What its online version does not yet do (based on my explorations) is contain all the books from its member publishers, nor link directly to the publisher’s page, nor link to any “buy now” sort of tool, nor routinely include descriptive copy, nor present much in the way of “related titles,” except in one particular category.

All of these would take a bit more marketing attention from the member publishers, and would necessitate a different pricing model from the organization for online inclusion, not to mention some increased effort by the AECB.

Links to the publisher’s book-specific Web pages (provided by the publisher), and publishers’ active participation in enriching the online catalog, could encourage ebook purchases, and facilitate Canadiana in general. It would not replace anyone’s own Website, but could be a traffic-driver and promotion tool for every member’s publications.

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