This document discusses patron-driven acquisition (PDA) models for ebook collections. It provides context on PDA by defining the concept and noting its importance in addressing patron demands within budget constraints. The document then examines how PDA can work in practice, including discovery options, pre-selection, mediation of purchase requests, funding, and access to purchased materials. It also presents a case study of PDA implementation at Norwich University and examines usage data and student preferences related to ebooks. The document argues that PDA aligns with the purpose of meeting patron needs and should be further explored despite challenges.

1. Josh Petrusa
Assoc. Dean for Technical Services
Butler University
ILF, Ft. Wayne, IN
November 16, 2011

3. What‟s that got to do
with…?
Patron-Driven Acquisition (PDA):
“any system whereby documents are
acquired by the library in response to
patrons' direct requests or selections,
rather than in response to librarians'
speculations about which specific
documents patrons are going to need”
Rick Anderson, University of Utah
http://www.alaeditions.org/blog/181/patron-driven-acquisition-rick-
anderson-answers-your-questions

5. Why is this important?
 Relevancy
 Patron demands
 Limits of traditional collection
development
 What is the purpose of our collection?

6. Is it new?
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/duncan/1991588954/

7. “While most librarians seriously
considered users‟ requests for
specific titles… in general librarians
selected the vast majority of titles. To
borrow a term from industry, librarians
historically built collections on the „just
in case‟ inventory model.
Nixon, Judith, Robert Freeman, and Suzanne Ward . "Patron-Driven
Acquisitions: An Introduction and Literature Review." Collection
Management. 35. (2010): 119-124.

8. “Is Selection Dead? The Rise of
Collection Management and the
Twilight of Selection,”
ALCTS/Collection Management &
Development Section (CMDS) at ALA‟s
2011 Midwinter Conference

9. Anderson on Collections
“Recently and quite suddenly, this fundamental
reality of the information world has
changed. Now, the documents that our
patrons need are very frequently available in
digital formats that make them easy to find and
make near-instantaneous acquisition of them
possible for the first time in human history... At
the same time, library acquisition budgets are
under unprecedented pressure. These two
facts should lead us to rethink our traditional
collection-building practices at a pretty radical
level.”
http://www.against-the-grain.com/2011/05/v-23-2-is-selection-dead-the-rise-of-
collection-management-and-the-twilight-of-selection/

10. http://www.slideshare.net/CharlestonConference/let-them-eat-everything-by-rick-anderson-university-of-utah

11. http://www.slideshare.net/CharlestonConference/let-them-eat-everything-by-rick-anderson-university-of-utah

12. "Patron-Driven Acquisition: Radically
Rethinking the Collection“ – ALA
Editions
http://www.alaeditions.org/blog/180/contin
uing-conversation-patron-driven-
acquisition-radically-re-thinking-
collection-session-
http://www.alaeditions.org/blog/181/patro
n-driven-acquisition-rick-anderson-
answers-your-questions
http://www.alaeditions.org/blog/176/patro
n-driven-acquisitions-readings
Image by hindsl at www.flickr.com/photos/55688631@N03/5375140845/

13. How do we reprogram
HAL?

14. How can PDA work?
 Where do patrons discover items?
 Is that data pre-selected?
 Are the purchase requests mediated?
 How will payment/fund accounting work
for the user and the library?
 What can the user do with purchased
items?
 What does this mean for
ownership/preservation?

15. Case study: Norwich Univ.
 Previous institution
 Private military college
 Online Graduate
programs
 Also moving into web-
scale discovery,
management systems
 Budget issues
http://norwich.typepad.com/wickpics/2011/02/a-
absorbed by book line beautiful-day-for-a-hike-on-paine-mountain.html

16. Ebook Library (EBL)
www.eblib.com
 Good selection of academic content
 Short –term loans (rental option)
 Downloading available
 Mediated vs Non-Mediated option
 MARC in OCLC; decent interface
 Usage terms for ownership titles
 Integration with Ezproxy for
authentication

17. Discovery - How will patrons
find?
 Local MARC or direct to vendor
interface?
 LOTS of data
 OCLC WMS in 2011

18. Pre-selection?
 Available in
EBL‟s admin
 Pre-selection
also now
happening via
OCLC WMS
admin
 (Ebrary‟s PDA
admin shown)

19. Mediation
 Mediation – do requests need to be
approved?
 Time/price negotiation
 Email?
 Direct Purchase?
 Norwich has moved to an automatic 7
day loan when one is requested

20. The money stuff
 Short term loans/rentals – cost savings
of % from full price purchase
 Move to purchase on the fourth 7 day
loan of an item (less than 2% of activity)
 Originally intended for online students,
on-campus use has increased, now 50-
50 with distance
 Expect to spend $25,000 this year,
funding from E-Res, Books, SGS
support lines

21. Guide created by Heidi Steiner, Distance Learning Librarian, Norwich University

24. Success at Norwich?
 Increased on-campus use
 Increase in total usage
 Complement to declining book budget
 Students silently happy?

25. Ebrary‟s 2011 Global Student
Ebook survey, compared with
„08
Key findings of the survey of more than 6,500
students include the following:
• E-book usage and awareness have not
increased significantly in 2011 over 2008
• Preference for printed books over electronic
books has not changed: Both are still equally
important
• The vast majority of students would choose
electronic over print if it were available and if
better tools along with fewer restrictions were
offered
http://www.ebrary.com/corp/newspdf/ebrary_2011_Student_Survey.pdf

26. “Tools and Restrictions”
 DRM – Adobe? Epub?
 Downloading available for MY device?
 Publishers in the way?
 Ebrary announces downloading; Wayne
Bivens-Tatum blogs the 18 Easy Steps
(at http://bit.ly/tpeHHr)
 About those devices…

27. Old Devices

28. New Devices

29. “If it were available”
 Ebooks available as PDA have changed
the game.
 We will still pre-select and buy print
books (just in case & preservation)
 Library no longer the only place to
discover information
 Patrons are connected to data without
us; we need to insert the library into their
workflow

30. Concern – imbalanced
collection?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stankuns/3229592156/

31. Usage Study – Quality?
 Does PDA allow unwanted content?
 Ebook Library (EBL) PDA at 5 schools
 PDA titles used twice as often as
librarian selected ebooks
 PDA ebooks saw more users per title
than pre-selected ebooks
 PDA collection had fewer “no use” titles
than pre-selected
J. McDonald and J. Price, “Beguiled by Bananas”, Charleston
Conference 2009 http://bit.ly/u04u9y

32. Getting It System Toolkit
(GIST)
 Developed at SUNY Geneseo
 Add-on for ILLiad
 Enables user requests to become loans or
purchases
 Improved patron interface
 Integrations with WorldCat API, Google Books,
HathiTrust
http://gettingitsystemtoolkit.wordpress.com/about/

33. http://www.slideshare.net/gettingitsystemtoolkit/gist-for-illiad-webpages

34. Overdrive?
http://overdriveblogs.com/library/2011/10/11/win-catalog-enhances-libraries%E2%80%99-role-as-connecting-point-to-more-content/

35. Academic / Public differences
 Content availability – pre-selection?
 High-use/demand items
 Digital divide issues
 Publishers and their, um… tactics
 Preservation questions – question of
mission?

36. More from Anderson
“The purpose of a collection is not to be a
wonderful collection; the purpose of a
collection is to meet the information needs
of library users. If it is now possible to
meet those needs by means other than
traditional collection-building (perhaps by
means of patron-driven, just-in-time
acquisition), and if budget cuts increase the
opportunity cost of every dollar spent on a
book, then don‟t we have a professional
duty to explore those other means? ”
http://www.against-the-grain.com/2011/05/v-23-2-is-selection-dead-the-rise-of-
collection-management-and-the-twilight-of-selection/

37. What‟s stopping us?
 Traditional collection philosophy
 Catalogs/systems that don‟t support
information about non-owned items
 Reluctance to support multiple
unfamiliar devices we don‟t own

38. Thank You
Josh Petrusa
jpetrusa@butler.edu
HAL 9000 in the library clip at
http://youtu.be/WG2xeJ2j5OE
Presentation at