Give ‘em What They Want Patron-Driven Collection Development Karen Fischer, Collections Analysis & Planning Librarian Mike Wright, Head, Acquisitions & Rapid Cataloging, The University of Iowa Libraries Iowa Library Association | Annual Conference | Oct. 14, 2010

Patron-Driven is “just in time” selection Users, not librarians, select resources for the library. Most often done with ebooks, but they could be print as well. There are many definitions of PDA, but Iowa’s is not mediated in any way Selection occurs via MARC records loaded into the local catalog with a live URL. Users can access the ebook with a click. Titles are also available via ebrary’s portal After a certain number of uses, the library owns the ebook and is billed by the vendor

Why PDA? Academic libraries have long relied on “Just in Case” collection development, AKA “expert” selection The “Kent Study” (1979) & Rick Lugg’s informal survey (2009) indicate that the “just in case” approach is lacking –Kent: Stats on 37,000 books acquired in % of these never circulated during the study period 60.2% circulated one or more times If no circulation in the 1 st 6 yrs, there’s 1% chance of ever circulating

Why PDA? These studies indicate that selection may not be as expert as we thought; we may not be buying what users really want Given the need to maximize use of resources and buy things we know will be used, educated guesses and blanket approval plans may no longer be good enough Enter patron-driven acquisition (PDA),where you only buy what gets used Iowa became interested in PDA for ebooks based on PDA model at UT-Austin

Developing PDA for U of I UI reps. spoke with staff from YBP Library Services, our primary monographs vendor, at ALA in ‘09. YBP was already doing patron driven plans for other libraries UI had worked with YBP to establish our innovative virtual approval plan and felt YBP could help realize the PDA program we envisioned Further talks Representatives from the University of Iowa, ebrary, and YBP met to rough out what would become the ebrary-YBP PDA pilot program:

Developing Iowa (cont’d) We had specific requirements: –Ebooks only –Non-mediated approach to title acquisition by patrons –Instantaneous access to the ebook title –Duplication control against print or ebooks owned by UI Libraries Details were pieced together very quickly; UI’s ebrary/YBP pilot project began on Oct. 1, Our model became the one ebrary/YBP used for other libraries

Specifics 10 uses would trigger a purchase There was a conscious decision to not announce the project to the public ebrary provided MARC records to load into our catalog Initially, ebrary offered 100K titles; we accidentally loaded only 19,000 Given our results, that mistake probably saved the whole pilot project: users loved it! UI deposited $25K with ebrary for purchases By Nov. 30 we spent $28K on 262 titles and the weekly spend was increasing – clearly we were onto something but the numbers were not sustainable

Specifics To slow things down, we chose to limit the number of titles available Working with YBP and ebrary, the full set of ebrary titles was passed against our YBP profile and limited by date. Also blocked certain publishers for which we’d purchased ebook deals: Elsevier, Springer, Wiley YBP is noted for having robust and detailed approval plan profiling; it was a perfect fit This worked; number purchases stabilized with a reasonably sized collection. PDA continued at a sustainable pace

Usage Analysis months of data for usage and PDA purchases (Sept/Oct ‘09 – Sept ‘10) 12,947 PDA titles in catalog | 47,367 Academic Complete titles (subscription) in catalog “user session” = how many times a patron uses a book in unique ebrary sessions

PDA Spending

PDA Publishers Highest number of titles purchased were from: –Taylor & Francis(211) –Elsevier (184) –Wiley (83) –Cambridge UP (60) –McGraw-Hill (53)

PDA Publishers Highest average use per publisher were from: –McGraw-Hill (17.8) –Continuum International Pub (13.2) –Amacom (13.0) –ME Sharpe (13.0) –U of Minnesota Press ( 11.4)

PDA Subject Analysis The most titles were purchased in: –Medicine (133) –Sociology (72) –Economics (58) –Education (54) –Biology (43)

PDA Usage – Most used titles

PDA Usage

PDA & Print Duplicates 714 PDA titles purchased in 11-month period 166 print duplicates (23%)

Print Duplicates Circulation Stats

Print PDA Duplicates Most duplicated subject areas: –Medicine –Psychology –Sociology –Education –Biology Most duplicated publication years: 2008, 2004, 2007, 2009

Total ebrary Title Usage – 11 mos.

Title Usage – most used publishers Misc Publishers (pubs with less than 25 user sessions) McGraw-Hill – 3396 Oxford Univ. Press – 3130 Routledge – 2948 University Presses (various)

Title Usage – average use/title Beacon Press Amacom World Bank University Presses (various) – 7.0 MIT Press – 7.0

University Presses Most user sessions: –Oxford UP (3130), Cambridge UP (1872), U of California Press (1426), U of Minnesota Press (1426), MIT Press (947) Highest average use/title: –Northwestern U P (21.0), U of Alabama Press (19.2), U of Hawaii Press (10.7), MIT Press (6.96), Purdue UP (6.75)

Title Usage- Subject Analysis

Most used ebrary titles

Future analyses YBP and ebrary will share data – coming early Hope to get better data to analyze the subscription titles from ebrary. Statistics will change with ebrary’s change to definition of a “trigger” for purchase (Oct ‘10).

Conclusions Publishers are interested in all the data generated. What does PDA mean for collection management policies? For budget allocations? Ebooks data and management is where ejournals were 25 yrs ago. Trust the patron!

Copyright Copyright 2010 by Karen Fischer and Michael Wright. This work is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 2.5 License. See: