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Open Book Canada

Mugo partner since 2016

Open Book Canada showcases Ontario’s literary scene, with a focus on books and events produced by the province’s independent, Canadian-owned publishers.

The story of Open Book’s evolution starts with three separate websites: Open Book Toronto, launched in 2007, followed by sister site Open Book Ontario in 2010, and then Open Book Explorer. All three brands were designed to showcase and celebrate books and book culture in Ontario, each with a slightly different angle and approach. But all three had been built on Drupal-based sites, which, over time and with every addition, had become unwieldy, overly complex, and were failing at their objective to manage and showcase great content.

The Organization of Book Publishers of Ontario (OBPO) contracted with the Association of Canadian Publishers (ACP) and its 49th Shelf team to leverage to work they had done on 49th Shelf and its eco-system of book publishing websites, to consolidate the three existing sites into a single, reimagined Open Book site.

The new site needed to enable to Open Book Canada to achieve its goals to:

  • Increase the profile of Canadian authors and publishers
  • Increase the readership of Canadian books through more retail sales
  • Increase awareness of, and accessibility to, Canadian writing, in all its diversity of region and genre

 

The resulting website is a widely read and highly regarded online magazine with a robust editorial program that supports multiple posts per day, a writer in residence, and an active events listing service to promote readings, book launches, and other literary events throughout Toronto and the rest of Ontario. The site is supported by book data from 49th Shelf, a linkage that will eventually see Open Book evolve into the largest-ever online platform dedicated to Ontario books and authors.

Open Book is now part of a community of major literary websites in Canada all maintained by the same systems and technology, including the eZ Publish CMS, that enable us to leverage and publish content, including rich ONIX publishing data, with ease. Its relaunch in fall 2016 was received with great enthusiasm by the literary community.

Learn more about our ecommerce websites for book publishers.

Case studies

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Universal library sign of a figure reading a book beside an accessibility sign

Looming ADA requirements mean it’s time for public libraries in the US to get serious about digital accessibility

Newly revised rules from the ADA regarding digital accessibility mean libraries in the United States have until April 26th, 2026, to ensure they are conforming to WCAG 2.1 AA standards. What does this entail, and how can a library system start making content more accessible?  

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Mobile view of the Chinook Arch website, with the catalogue search highlighted

Making keyboard navigation more accessible with JavaScript ‘focus traps’

Tabbing through a web page can be a frustrating experience. The user tabs to access a menu, but with the keyboard's next tap, they’ve moved on to another page element and have to retrace their steps to access the desired content.

For users who rely on keyboard navigation, this can be a major accessibility roadblock. And for other site visitors, it’s just poor UX.

Fortunately, you can implement a fairly straightforward function in JavaScript called a “focus trap” to ensure users don’t leave the page area they’re in without intending to do so.

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a gear labeled CMS surrounded by an array of cleaning tools

Cleaning up unused CSS and JS files from WordPress pages

WordPress can be a great option for easy website development, but because of the rapid evolution of the CMS, it can lead to inefficient code and slow loading pages. We'll show you how to clean up unused CSS and JS from pages to improve site-wide performance. 

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illustration of a reCAPTCHA screen, withe question marks in place of text, and robots obscuring the photos for identification.

Making Google reCAPTCHA v2 play nice with browser form validation

CAPTCHA is an essential need on online forms, but to be blunt, the UX sucks. Without the implementation tips (helpfully detailed below), Google’s otherwise reliable reCAPTCHA service implemented “as-is” doesn’t actually provide any browser validation. The user will have to wait for it to make a time-consuming round trip to the server. It’s a problem for anyone and becomes compounded for users with accessibility needs.

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