Transparency

The CELUS company originated in the Czech Republic, and it is now serving more than 1,000 libraries from 2 dozen countries; its subscription renewal rate is about 99%. The software is compatible with more than 100 non-COUNTER platforms. Ken DiFiore, library ambassador for CELUS, gave a presentation at the 2024 Charleston Conference that provides an overview of the product, and the YouTube channel offers how-to videos.

CELUS’ latest announcement is the February 2025 introduction of Version 8.0 of its econtent usage platform, which is fully compliant with Release 5.1 of the COUNTER Code of Practice (R5.1). This means CELUS customers get enhancements such as increased granularity with OA usage reporting and trend analysis, an expanded number of access and data types for usage measurements, and more accurate usage comparisons across publishers over time.

Collaboration

CELUS touts its speed; support for COUNTER 5, COUNTER 4, and non-COUNTER stats; effortless SUSHI management; and customizable reporting as its four main benefits. Pricing is based on the number of publisher platforms.

Another one of CELUS’ selling points is its emphasis on partnerships. Its About page states, “CELUS was developed in 2018 as an open-source project for CzechELib, the National Centre for Information Support of Research, Development, and Innovation, a consortium representing approximately 130 member institutions in the Czech Republic, by a private company Big Dig Data. The acronym ‘CELUS’ stands for ‘CzechELib Usage Statistics.’ Big Dig Data, as the name suggests, develops custom solutions for big data processing. The company is also an active member of the COUNTER Metrics Technical Advisory Group, enthusiastically participating in the development of the COUNTER Code of Practice (COP5).”

Another partnership is with ConsortiaManager, which began in October 2023. The companies “offer a comprehensive solution to manage the whole e-resources lifecycle, including advanced cost-per-use assessment to track the translation of e-resources investments into community use.”

Authenticity

The company is serious about its work, but the people behind its branding have a sense of humor. Featured prominently on the homepage is a joke about CELUS eating SUSHI for breakfast. If you take the time to read its Meet the Team section, you’ll be amused at the unconventional job titles (library sorceress, data processing genius, etc.) and quirky bios.

Customer Happiness Manager Q&A

I recently spoke with Tomáš Novotný, founder and customer happiness manager (aka CEO), about CELUS’ accomplishments, priorities, and plans. Our conversation has been lightly edited.

Brandi Scardilli: How did CELUS decide it was ready to enter the U.S. market in 2023? Can you talk about that expansion? You’re already in 2 dozen countries after about a year and a half of branching out. What has ramping up your services to be so international looked like?

Tomáš Novotný: An excellent first question! [said with laughter] It was one that we debated internally for several years. Following the success of CELUS across the Czech National Library Consortium (CzechELib), we took a relatively conservative approach to building interest in CELUS. We started with a business development partnership in Europe with ConsortiaManager (CM). CM is a system for streamlining and optimizing the workflow process with e-resource subscriptions. CELUS can feed usage stats to CM, which greatly improves the subscription assessments made by libraries and consortia. Our initial collaboration with CM involved a handful of European library consortia and their individual library members; this included the Irish Research e-Library (IReL), Biblioteca do Conhecimento Online (B-on), and the National Library of Sweden (Bibsam). The growth of CELUS subscriptions in Europe ultimately gave us the confidence to expand our sales and marketing activities to North America.

A key aspect of that strategy was adding Ken DiFiore, former library outreach director at Portico, to our team. His experience promoting innovative library technology, coupled with his domain expertise in librarianship, was the perfect fit to serve as our library ambassador. Under DiFiore’s leadership, our outreach investment has resulted in substantial subscription growth in the States; this included take-up by large research libraries, such as Texas A&M, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Kentucky, and the University of Iowa.

A significant portion of our outreach investments has been exhibiting at appropriate conferences; for example, ER&L, Charleston, and UKSG. In addition, we will exhibit at ACRL and MLA this year. We have considerable uptake by the medical library community, so we’ve decided to exhibit at MLA. We know that smaller libraries struggle with e-resource stats as well, so a major aspect of our 2025 plan is to focus on connecting with librarians across this community.

Scardilli: I like the sense of humor the CELUS job titles and bios have, thanks to Simona Popelkova, product owner/chief everything officer. How does that lighthearted touch on your website reflect how the company approaches its relationships with customers?

Novotný: Thank you for noticing [with more laughter!]. While CELUS is indeed a commercial vendor, I insisted that we implement an engagement strategy that is authentic, transparent, and collaborative. I rejected the use of typical corporate titles, like vice president of this or that, just to make us appear like something we’re not! We’re a small startup, based in Prague, with fewer than 10 staff members, with a family- or clan-like internal structure, that is focused on helping libraries. Popelkova’s lighthearted job titles are the perfect expression of our identity and philosophy. For example, I most definitely perform CEO duties; however, I feel my number-one priority is ensuring subscriber satisfaction, which is reflected in my formal title as customer happiness manager.

Scardilli: Tell me about how the descriptor “Designed and built together with the community” exists today. For example, CELUS is part of the COUNTER Metrics Technical Advisory Group. Are there other ways CELUS prioritizes community?

Novotný: The concept of collaboration is one of our core organizational values; it is reflected in the history of CELUS. Back in 2018, CzechELib, with financial support from the Czech Ministry of Education, engaged me and my small team of technologists to build a new infrastructure for the dynamic harvesting, reporting, and managing of electronic resource usage statistics. CzechELib has about 130 member institutions and an annual e-resources budget around $50 million, so needless to say, this was a daunting project. By late 2020, my team successfully implemented the open source code at CzechELib. The project’s success can be attributed to the collaboration between my team and the technical services librarians across both CzechELib and the National Technical Library. We wrote code based on the requirements of these librarians; the librarians guided our developers. Following our success at CzechELib, we transformed the open source code to a cloud-based application and created a subscription model for financial sustainability, which we called CELUS.

For CELUS to succeed as an online platform, we recognized the need to extend our collaboration with librarians outside the Czech Republic. Our first partnership effort was with Tasha Mellins-Cohen, executive director of COUNTER Metrics, formerly Project COUNTER. Since e-resource usage stats are heavily dependent on the COUNTER specification, we offered our assistance to support the development and implementation of new specification releases. Mellins-Cohen welcomed our support, and she added Beda Kosata, the CELUS lead developer, to the COUNTER Metrics Technical Advisory Group.

Another community collaboration is our work with three national organizations that conduct annual surveys: the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). From a library perspective, the strategic objective of these surveys is to assess and compare the efficacy of investments and services across institutions. To help librarians respond to the usage stats components of these surveys, the CELUS team has developed custom search filters that generate metrics that can be plugged directly into the survey response forms.

Scardilli: According to the January 2025 press release about subscription agreements with members of the Council of Australasian University Librarians (CAUL), “CELUS has developed and implemented a specialized reporting module to help Australasian libraries in compiling metrics for CAUL’s Statistics Collection.” Can you talk about the level of customization for customers? Is customization an inherent aspect of setting up every customer account, or was this a special case?

Novotný: The customization announced in this press release is similar to the results of our collaboration with ACRL, IPEDS, and ARL. In a similar fashion as ACRL, IPEDS, and ARL, CAUL conducts surveys to facilitate the demonstration of library value and impact. We created this specialized report and made it available at no cost throughout the CAUL community.