E-Book Publishing at IDRC Bill Carman Publisher/Senior Communications Advisor 31 January 2007

Outline  What is IDRC?  Why do we publish and for whom?  What do we publish and how?  E-book publishing and distribution

What is IDRC?  A Crown corporation created by the Parliament of Canada in 1970  Supports Southern researchers to enable them to find practical, long-term solutions to social, economic, and environmental problems  Our Mission: Empowerment through Knowledge

IDRC Offices Ottawa Montevideo Dakar Nairobi Singapore Cairo New Delhi

Four Program Areas  Environment and Natural Resource Management  Information and Communication Technologies for Development  Innovation, Policy, and Science  Social and Economic Policy

Example: TEHIP  Funded in partnership with CIDA  Reduced child mortality in two districts of Tanzania by almost 50%  Now being scaled up in other regions in Africa  Fixing Health Systems (

Publishing since books published for a global audience of  Decision-makers and policy advisors  Researchers, academics, and students  Development professionals

Our Current Approach  Copublication in English, French, and Spanish  Electronic rights: IDRC / Print rights: copublisher  License foreign language editions  Earthscan, Economica, Plaza y Valdés…

Print vs Electronic  Continuing demand for print, but…  Print distribution to developing world is costly and unreliable  For research: if it is not online, it is invisible

Decision: Electronic  Continued print fulfillment by copublisher  IDRC focus on e-content  Bottom line: maximum dissemination, impact on development, public accountability

First Steps  1995: first “web book”  Free HTML increased demand for print edition  All IDRC copublications are now available in free HTML format from our website  Print versions may be ordered from our copublisher

Free and For Sale?  Frankfurt Book Fair 2002: NetLibrary  Negligible overlap between audiences  Win-win: increased dissemination for IDRC, new products for NetLibrary

The Process, and Growth  PDF to XML conversion  XML and metadata to NetLibrary via FTP  Ebrary, Ebooks.com, Canadian Electronic Library, Overdrive.com, MyiLibrary  Google Book Search

Digital Asset Management  codeMantra’s Collection Point  Conversion services, metadata management  Web interface and link to Distribution Channels  Capacity to add more Distribution Channels as needed

Distribution on CD  IDRC 2006: bilingual, annual CD  Free distribution to developing countries, either by mail or in person  Two-disk set: one disk contains 101 XML e-books

E-Books: The Future  Journals, newspapers, dictionaries, encyclopedias, cookbooks, phone book, reference books?  Readership of e-Globe and Mail > print edition  Expanding Internet connectivity in developing world: new generation of e-book users?

E-Books: The Future  Latin American traffic on Google Book Search  E-book sales to libraries and institutions in developing countries  Open Access: IDRC Institutional Repository to launch in March 2007

Contact IDRC Publishing Bill Carman Publisher International Development Research Centre PO Box 8500 Ottawa, ON, Canada K1G 3H9