Patron Driven Acquisitions: Or I Wish I Knew Then... Page: 3

                                
* How would the records be loaded into the catalog and at what frequency? Is the quality of the
MARC record important to you for the Discovery record, or would we be satisfied with
author/title/series/ and a few subject headings? What level of quality of the final record did we
want in our catalog? Were there extra charges for this level of quality?
* What are the purchase triggers? Are all rentals the same percentage or do some publishers
charge more?
* Would we be invoiced for each purchase or is the amount deducted from a deposit account?
What kind of purchase report would be made available to us and how frequently? How would
we be notified when we become close to having spent our deposit account?
* What happens when we reach our deposit limit? Must we withdraw or suppress the records
from our catalog or would the vendor no longer allow viewing and downloading?
Getting Started
Our first consideration was how much we could allocate for purchasing through the PDA, which would
be the driver for how the program is set up. Having a large amount of funds enabled us to establish a
broad profile that included areas that had been excluded from our print monograph profile. If our funds
had been more limited, we would have had to limit the program to a few targeted subjects. Some
libraries had chosen to start with limited funds, expanding these funds when results were promising.
We decided to start with a range of subjects that covered the entire curriculum.
We next had to consider how to handle e-books that were duplicates of items already available in our
print collection. We considered which format our users would prefer and whether having duplicates
was of value to us. We decided to exclude exact duplicates of electronic books from the PDA program.
However, newer editions would be included.
The YBP profile enabled us to limit the items available for viewing and purchase. Such limitations
included by type of book or treatment, as well as audience levels, textbooks, specific series, and even
specific publishers. Thus, we were able to exclude titles in the General and Juvenile categories,
textbooks and selected publishers.
Finally, we considered how we would assess the program by defining level of success. We would be
satisfied if the amount that was set aside was spent at the planned rate and if the collection of titles
purchased were similarly distributed across the subject areas as our print monograph collection.
Methods of Assessment
The methods we used to assess the Demand-Driven Acquisitions program were based on our primary
concerns: ensuring that the resources available are of high-quality and would have been purchased if
not for the constraints of cost; that the collection of resources selected by our patrons for purchasing
are appropriately distributed given the curriculum; that the usage of the DDA titles is balanced for the
curriculum; and that our funds are well-managed and not spent too quickly nor in an unbalanced
manner. To address the first two concerns, we compared both the collection of DDA titles and those
purchased against our print collection in terms of the distribution of titles across the spectrum of