Canadian libraries are experiencing a boom period in lending out digital books.
This is partly due to the presence of Overdrive and EBSCO in Canada, these two companies facilitates the entire infrastructure for libraries to easily offer books to patrons. Every month new branches are buying into the system and roughly 21% of the entire country has a digital lending strategy. This is stimulating record growth in this sector and customers are ultimately benefiting from free content.
In the first quarter of 2012, eBooks accounted for 28% of circulated loans, across the entire country. Also, 59.43% of book buyers claim to have visited the library within the last 12 months. Of those respondents, 19.4% visit the library, either in person or online, 2 to 3 times a month and 16.3% visited once a month.
On an average week in Canada over 63,196 e-books are loaned out from the libraries. The entire industry in Canada saw a 50% increase in digital circulation from 2011 to 2012.
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