BookNet Canada is partnering with the library community to connect readers with new book releases through a crowd-sourcing initiative called Loan Stars.

A list of Top 10 forthcoming titles, as voted on by participating library staff, will be published a month prior on the Loan Stars website. Modelled after the U.S.-based program Library Reads, Loan Stars operates through CataList, BookNet’s digital catalogue service, with electronic advance copies available via NetGalley. Any Canadian library staff member is eligible to vote and post reviews.

The program is a joint collaboration with the Canadian Urban Libraries Council, the British Columbia Library Association Readers’ Advisory Committee, the Ontario Library Association Readers’ Advisory Committee, NetGalley, and other library vendors. Currently the list is limited to adult titles, but Pamela Millar, BookNet’s director of customer relations, says there has been demand for YA and juvenile titles, and says they could be added in the future. Millar expects Loan Stars’s lists to be of interest not just to libraries, but also to wholesalers and other data aggregators.

May’s top-rated titles are:

1. I Let You Go, Clare Mackintosh (Berkley/Penguin Canada)
2. Do Not Say We Have Nothing, Madeleine Thien (Knopf Canada)
3. A Country Road, A Tree, Jo Baker (Random House Canada)
4. Everybody’s Fool, Richard Russo (Knopf)
5. The Noise of Time, Julian Barnes (Random House Canada)
6. Life Without a Recipe: A Memoir of Food and Family, Diana Abu-Jaber (WW Norton/Penguin Random House Canada)
7. The City of Mirrors, Justin Cronin (Doubleday Canada)
8. The Voodoo Killings, Kristi Charish (Vintage Canada)
9. Bad Singer: The Surprising Science of Tone Deafness and How We Hear Music, Tim Falconer (House of Anansi Press)
10. Not Working, Lisa Owens (Doubleday Canada)