Our collections

The Library connects students, faculty and researchers with scholarly, reliable and accessible collections that reflect and respond to the needs of uOttawa programs and areas of focus.

Our goal is to build enduring collections:  

• Make collections easier to discover, access, and use
• Participate in collaborative efforts to maximize the scholarly material available to users
• Foster collections sustainability
• Expand, preserve and promote our unique and special collections
• Promote our character through emphasis on our French language scholarly collections

In 2020-21, the uOttawa Library: 

• Saw over 1,9 million Library website visits and 6.3 million Omni visits
• Facilitated access to 5.8 million items, including 3.2 million e-books
• Fulfilled 2.5 million article requests
• Supported 5.7 million database searches
• Answered 24,000 of your information and reference support requests (in person and virtually)

Collections budget:

A library consortium is a cooperative of local, regional, subject-specific, or national libraries that coordinate goals and strategy for the benefit of all their members. Typically, this involves acquiring resources together. Consortia such as these band together to negotiate collectively with publishers to acquire digital content on a large scale, such as ejournal collections, ebook collections, and databases. 

This approach aggregates negotiation and purchasing power and results in better pricing, multi-year agreements, and efficiencies in negotiating, delivering content, invoicing, and collection management. 

Many academic libraries spend a significant portion of their collections budget on consortial agreements. At the University of Ottawa in 2022-23, we spent $4,455,695 via the Canadian Research Knowledge Network and $3,233,663 via the Ontario Council of University Libraries.

• Principles and criteria used for decision making in any collections budget reduction exercise 
• CRKN Announces Transformative Agreement with Wiley - removes article processing charges (APCs) for authors
• Information on availability of resources for course planning purposes 
• A uOttawa Library Collections Primer
• uOttawa statement on eTextbooks
• Ad Hoc University Committee on Sustainable Library Collections

For any questions about the information on this page, please contact [email protected]