Kia ora koutou,

Prior to switching Ebook Central over to Open Athens I’ve been investigating the use of the Bookshelf function by UC accounts. Once the switch to OA has been made users will be asked to create new accounts – and their bookshelves will not be carried over. They should instead pre-emptively export their data.

We’d predicted limited use, however after receiving stats from ProQuest this turns out not to be the case. Great that it’s being used, however the export process is somewhat manual, including needing to individually export any annotations per book. I had pressed for more information and asked if there was at all a bulk import/upload option. Unfortunately users will need to recreate their Bookshelf folders and add books using the export csv urls.

I’ll be putting out comms tomorrow via Library News, Tū ki te tahi and Tūpono about the upcoming change and how to export data (just in case I get a final reply overnight with a magical solution).

ProQuest have a short article about saving your Bookshelf before an authentication change that would be worth reviewing if you think you’ll get questions from staff and students. To the Subject Librarians in particular – if you know any frequent users of this function please encourage them to export their shelves.

Post-switching Ebook Central to OA there is an option to merge accounts for those who have not saved their data. However, it requires contacting ProQuest, providing details, and is not guaranteed to retrieve everything. They also have a short article about this.

Ngā mihi,

Leah Pengelly (Library Digital Services)