MLC 2018

The Centre for Equitable Library Access or CELA, is a national, not-for-profit organization providing accessible materials to Canadians with print disabilities through public libraries such as Winnipeg, Western Manitoba and Portage La Prairie. Driven by a commitment to innovation and responsiveness to patron and member library needs, CELA is reinventing its user interfaces with an open source solution and migrating its catalogue to a new platform developed in partnership with Benetech, Inc. Benetech is a nonprofit with a focus on developing software for social good and the producer of Bookshare. Bookshare offers the largest collection of accessible materials in the world and is offered to patrons for free from libraries that are CELA members. The main benefit of this implementation will be the combining of the Bookshare and CELA collections into one searchable and transactional catalogue. This and other improvements will be discussed by representatives from CELA and Bookshare.