Nataly Alarcón: BookNet Canada acknowledges that its operations are remote and our colleagues
contribute their work from the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, Anishinaabe,
Haudenosaunee, Wendat, and Mi’kmaq Peoples, the original nations of the lands we now call Beeton,
Brampton, Guelph, Halifax, Toronto, and Vaughan. We endorse the Calls to Action from the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission of Canada and support an ongoing shift from gatekeeping to spacemaking in
the book industry.
Jackie Fry: Hello Everyone! Thank you for coming to hear about what’s new for Loan Stars in 2023! I’m
Jackie Fry, the co-chair of the Loan Stars advisory group and Director of Product Development at
BookNet Canada. It’s my pleasure to be here to share with you about what’s new for the Loan Stars
program this year.
We have made a significant change to the Loan Stars program for 2023.
From its inception through to the end of 2022, the Loan Stars program allowed recommendations
through CataList, creating a monthly reader’s advisory list of forthcoming titles based on the top 10
Adult and top 10 Junior picks chosen by Canadian library staff. In 2022, for a variety of reasons and after
discussing with the Loan Stars Advisory Group, we decided to make a change.
Instead of collecting recommendations made by Canadian library staff on individual titles, we are
pleased to advise that we are using the data we are collecting for our LibraryData application to produce
ranked top 10 lists of titles that are most ordered by Canadian libraries across the country.
Briefly, LibraryData collects weekly data from nearly 80 library systems and over 800 branches. From
Vancouver to Halifax and at many points in between, we collect information on Loans, Holds, Renewals,
Copies Owned, Copies Out, and Copies On Order. Each week we aggregate the data together into an All
Libraries view of the country.
In 2023, If you are an active library participating in LibraryData, you are participating in Loan Stars.
If you are interested in what kinds of reporting LibraryData can provide or are a library who is not yet
participating, please check out past and current presentations on LibraryData for more insights or
contact us at librarydata@booknetcanada.ca.
So what does this mean for Loan Stars?
In January we released the first of the lists based on LibraryData. To produce these lists, we used the
maximum on order numbers from the previous month’s data to determine the top 10 titles most
ordered by Canadian libraries for the month.
Because it is a comparatively quiet time in the industry, we produced lists for January and February
together. Unusual for the Adult list which is usually monthly but standard for the Junior list as we
publish lists for two months at a time for titles ranging from Juvenile to Young Adult.
In March, we released our first ever specialty list featuring the top titles for Canadian contributors. It is
one of the advantages of LibraryData. We can investigate and publish lists based on a variety of criteria.
What does this mean for libraries? They will of course continue to have free access to CataList and all its
wonderful features including notes mark-up, marketing information for specific titles, early access to

publisher catalogues, brief MARC record exports for bibliographic data, and ordering support. All you
need to do is sign into your account to take advantage of all of these features.
In addition, we will continue to collaborate with CataList to publish monthly catalogues featuring the
month’s top picks, as well as offer the previous year’s historical catalogues if you want to be reminded
of the titles that made the Loan Stars lists in the recent past.
Libraries will continue to be able to view samples, excerpts, reading guides, teachers’ guides, tables of
contents, and…interior images such as these examples provided to preview the panels for this
interesting Haida Manga out from Douglas & MacIntyre, or these images from a picture book published
by Orca.
For the purposes of selection, Library staff will still be able to request an advanced reading copy from
the publisher directly or request a NetGalley when it’s available.
And Library staff who are signed up for our products will be able to vote in our Best of the Brightest
survey at the end of the year. Conducted through SurveyMonkey, library staff choose from all the adult
titles that made our top 10 lists through the course of the year.
So what does this mean for publishers? Well, publishers can see the Eligible icon associated with
forthcoming titles in CataList which can inform your collaboration with libraries who are considering
ordering your books.
And for everyone, the Loan Stars site maintains both an Adult and Juvenile Top 10 Archives of all the
previous Adult and Junior lists published in the past for easy reference.
So what’s next for Loan Stars?
We will be planning to add the Loan Stars specialty lists to the Loan Stars website. Currently, specialty
lists will be featured in blog posts on the BookNet Canada blog and promoted through social media.
Also, we will be monitoring and collecting feedback on this change to the Loan Stars program.
We look forward to hearing from you! Thank you for watching and as always we encourage you to sign
up for our eNews newsletter to keep track of new lists and all the activities at BookNet.