Patron-Driven Acquisitions - New Study Published in February

Librarians have been excited about PDA for a while now. Imagine a library being able to offer access to a huge menu of content, but only paying for material actually used by patrons. Since 50% of print material acquired by academic libraries oftentimes never gets used, this results in a 50% cost savings (or 100% increase in bang for the buck). In theory, this sounds great. But what are the hard facts and does PDA actually end up saving money and making collections more attractive to users?

Patron-Driven Acquisitions: Current Successes and Future Directions is a brand new title from Routledge Reference that presents ths findings from a recent PDA scheme at Purdue University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Illinois. Written by three experienced acquisitions librarians, the book presents a powerful argument for involving patrons in the book selection process.

The introduction of ebooks is also changing the landscape for libraries. Libraries are slowly getting used to the idea of providing all-you-can-eat services. What used to be an obvious limit resulting from a book's physicality has become a completely arbitrary limit imposed by licensing agreements. This new publication explores new programs that allow patrons to select e-books or participate in other innovative ways in building the library collections.

Patron-Driven Acquisitions: Current Successes and Future Directions was published on the 18th of February 2011. If you would like to learn more about this title, or to order your copy, please click here.