Good PDA or Good PR? - assessing PDA activity in the academic Good PDA or Good PR? - assessing PDA activity in the academic library Briony Heyhoe-Pullar – University of Huddersfield Steve Sharp – University of Leeds

Background to PDA at Huddersfield Between April 2010 to April 2014, various PDA suppliers have been used SupplierNo. of titles boughtNo. of titles imported Dawson Dawson Dawson Coutts Ebrary5753,738 EBL ,914 Total ,218

Why EBL? PDA with EBL ran from 7 th February to 13 th April 2014 Advantages of EBL include: Existing Proquest customer so activation of MARC records is easier and quicker Like EBL model which includes a free of charge 5min browse period with unlimited page turns Library decides on the number of STLs to trigger a purchase Library can access spend reports and see which titles have been purchased through LibCentral Flexible content parameters for each subject EBL gathers data on who is using the titles

Questionnaire The 5 questions we asked were: Subject area School Readership level Do you have a preference for reading electronic or print books? (with an option for them to say either p, e, or no preference) Will you be accessing this book on a mobile device- if yes, what type?

The set up All subjects were included, but only titles published after 01/01/10 Law and computing titles were to be published after 01/01/13 Maximum list price was set at £120 Readership levels were undergraduates and postgraduates We opted for 2 short term loans before a purchase is triggered We set the short term loan length at 1 day We marketed this round of PDA, which we have never done in the past

What we achieved Spent the money in 9 weeks Money spent equated to 20% of the book fund 6071 titles were accessed 637 of these were purchases, the remainder were short term loans

Data analysis

Recommendations for PDA 2014/15 PDA to be added to the suite of services that the library offers To top slice 25% of the book fund for PDA To reduce the years available in the selection pool to increase the longevity of PDA over the year and to leave the subject selection as broad as possible To review the number of rentals that trigger a purchase To keep EBL as our PDA supplier for 2014/15