PDF - CARL - ABRC

VII. Aggregators and Harvesters
Aggregators and harvesters improve the accessibility and visibility of digital publications.
Harvesters aggregate the metadata from digital collections, so that they are searchable from a
single location. Digital aggregators bundle content from different publishers together. They
partner with multiple publishers to supply content (e-books, audio books, other media) and
provide a platform for libraries and end users to search, order, access, and download the content
on the Web. Libraries favor using aggregators and harvesters because they provide access to
content from groups of publishers or repositories, instead having to deal individually with each
organization.
Canadian Electronic Library Publishers Collection
http://www.canadianelectroniclibrary.ca/Cdn_publishers_collection.html
The Canadian Electronic Library Publishers Collection is a collection of over 25,000 Canadian
monographs (of which over 10,000 are current in-copyright titles) from 65 Canadian publishers,
making the service Canada's largest collection of online books for libraries. Among these are all
the major Canadian University Presses. Many of the titles in the collection are from Canada's
leading scholarly publishers, most being offered for the first time in online e-book form. Over
80% of the titles in the Canadian Publishers Collection have never been available in digital form
and most of the titles in the collection are available electronically only through the Canadian
Electronic Library.
Any item in the collection is available to all users simultaneously, and sophisticated search tools
allow for quick location of items of interest. Users may move easily between material on all
media (text, audio, video) and local collections may be integrated with published sources.
The Canadian Publishers Collection is produced by Gibson Library Connections a Canadian
company that aggregates and licenses products to libraries and library consortia across Canada.
The Collection is widely available in Canada because has been purchased by the Canadian
Research Knowledge Network a licensing consortium representing over 70 Canadian universities.
Case Study: Canadian Association of Research Libraries Metadata Harvester
http://carl-abrc-oai.lib.sfu.ca/
The CARL Harvester is the search service that aggregates the metadata records from participating
Canadian repositories, allowing users to seamlessly search all of the repositories at once, using
one common point of access. The harvester is hosted at Simon Fraser University Library, was in
March 2004 to enhance the visibility of Canadian repository content. The harvester currently
aggregates metadata from 23 Canadian repositories representing over 140,000 full text documents
housed in the repository.
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