“Here’s a new report out today from BookNet Canada.

From the Introduction of the Report:

In February 2013 BookNet Canada released the study Canadians Reading Canadians: How Interested Are Canadians in Reading Canadian Content? The goal of this research was to review the attitudes and opinions of Canadian book-buyers when it comes to purchasing and reading books by Canadian authors or about Canadian subjects.

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One of the most poignant findings that came out of the BookNet Canada study was pertaining to the decline of book buyers reading Canadian authors and the increase in uncertainty over whether they had even read a Canadian author in the last year. Respondents who said they read a Canadian author declined from 41% in 2002 to 24% in 2012. Corresponding to this, we found that 43% of respondents did not know whether they had read a Canadian author in the last year, up from 19% in 2002. There was a similar trend over the past decade with Canadian subjects.

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After Canadians Reading Canadians was released, BookNet Canada was asked to conduct some follow-up research to see whether these same findings apply to book buyers who use the library. It is important to emphasize that the focus of this work is not to review library collections, as we assume that Canadian public libraries provide their patrons with exceptional access to Canadian authors and content, but rather to assess patrons’ ability to discover Canadian content, with a particular focus on online discovery.

Direct to Full Text Report (16 page; PDF)”

Stephen