1. Full-Scale, Patron-Driven Acquisition of E-Books in Practice
Wellesley College
Brooke Henderson, Art Librarian
Deborah Lenares, Manager Acquisitions and ILL
Raymond Schmidt, Manager Cataloging and Metadata
Steve Smith, Manager Library Collections and Preservation

2. Overview Who we are – Who are you?
Making the decision and getting buy-in
Selecting a vendor
Setup and operation
Funding
Collection management
Public services implications
This is what we’re planning to talk about today. But we’ll give you a chance to let us know which of these areas you would like us to focus on.

3. Who we are Small, liberal arts, women’s college
Highly selective, undergraduate
2300 students 350 faculty
Library Collection budget
Journals and databases
$ 1,500,000
Monographs
$ 600,000
So first who we are: We all work together in the Library Collections group at Wellesley College Library. I am…
This information about Wellesley is important for you to know as you consider what the PDA experience was like for us and how it might be different at your institution.
We are small, undergrad only, highly competitive, and have a relatively generous collections budget.
And now we want to know who you are, so get your clicker ready..

4. Who are you? Library public services Library collections
Library technical services
Media services
IT services
other

5. What is your experience with PDA?
PDA program in place
Starting soon
Plan to start in 6 to 12 months
Still deciding
What is PDA?

6. What is Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA)
E-books purchased by patron at time of use
Immediate access to content
Books found through the library catalog
Paid through an institutional account
User is not aware if the book is owned or not

7. Which topics are you most interested in?
Getting buy-in
Selecting a vendor
Setup and operation
Financial impact/management
Collection impact/management
Use data
Public services implications

8. Deciding to do PDA: Advantages*
“Return on Investment” – Only buying what is used
Immediate access to resources
Access to much broader collection
Building collections in new areas
Ability to see what users want
These are advantages of ebook PDA identified in a poll of staff from libraries with current or planned PDA programs. Some of these advantages will be useful for management “ROI” Some might be useful for collection librarians/bibliographers
* PDA survey and presentation April 2010

9. Deciding to do PDA: Concerns
(True or False?)
Collections will become non-scholarly, unbalanced
Inability to control cost
Not enough scholarly titles available
DRM restrictions – Interlibrary Loan
Loss of control
Staff time to maintain
Some patrons don’t want e-books
We had a lot of questions before we started:
But for many questions we decided we would just jump in and find answers as we gained experience.
We’re fortunate at Wellesley to have a generous enough collections budget that we don’t squabble over it and staff and management that are willing to take risks.

10. Strategies for getting buy in
The library is still in control
Start small ($) but broad
Be prepared to evaluate and increase funding if successful
Steve will show you how the library has some control over what is purchased, by controlling the profile. Educating staff about this can help them get over some of their fears around this.
Start small: If there’s even one collection manager that supports the idea start with funds from her budget, but don’t limit books to only that discipline. Once other collection managers see that quality books are purchased they will have more confidence.
We started wth $10,000 from the science monograph’s budget, but included books from all disciplines. After five months we added another $10,000 from the social science monograph’s budget and then added $45,000 with available funds at the end of the fiscal year. This is a great way to spend end of year money since it allows you to use the money for monographs which are usually not possible for this kind of end of year purchase.

11. Selecting a vendor Criteria http://bit.ly/PDA_Vendor_criteria
Important:
Integration with book vendor
Free browse
Short term loan before purchase
Clear copy printing displays
Multiple simultaneous users
Selecting the right vendor is critical to limiting your risk of overspending.
We included Collections, Acquisitions and Research and Instruction in evaluation process

12. Setup: Creating a profile
Subject areas: All (except ‘study aids’)
Only titles published after 1 January 2007
Keyword exclusions: ‘for dummies’ ‘Cliffs’
Price cap = $500
All languages
Set # of short-term-loans before autopurchase (2)

13. Setup: Creating a profile (cont.)
Publishers:
Included all publishers on our AP (book & slip)
Expanded to include as many relevant academic publishers as possible
De-duped against our ebrary subscription collection
Chose not to de-dupe against our print holdings
Original load ~25,000 titles; now ~45,000

14. Profile modifications
Add publishers as they become available (almost monthly)
More keyword exclusions
Constantly adding and deleting specific titles
Have not de-duped against ebrary since the beginning; probably should

15. Cataloging Issues Deciding on source of records
Quality of records
Existing workflows
Ease of maintenance (additions, deletions)
Establishing a workflow

16. Cataloging: Source of records
Publisher (EBL)
MARC record vendor (Serials Solutions)
Do it yourself?

17. Quality: EBL MARC records
Content lacking or non-standard
Incorrect MARC tagging, lack of subfield delimiters
Subject access weak

18. Quality: Serials Solutions MARC records
Derived from cataloging of print versions, often Library of Congress (LC) records
BUT, when LC records don’t exist, brief Books in Print records from Bowker are used (not cataloging from other libraries found in OCLC database)

19. “Across the revolutionary divide”
EBL subject access:
History
Serials Solutions/LC subject access:
Social change – Russia – History
Social change – Soviet Union – History
Russia – History – Alexander II,
Russia – History – Alexander III,
Russia – History – Nicholas II,
Soviet Union – History –
Soviet Union – History –
Soviet Union – History –

20. Cataloging: EBL 2010 enhancements
Corrected most MARC tagging problems, but subject heading strings still a problem
Changes aligned with new standard for provider-neutral records
Inclusion of OCLC record number
Subject access still variable

21. Cataloging Workflow: “a kind of reverse cataloging”
Ideally, publishers and MARC record vendors work together
Monthly updates: consider best way to handle deletions as well as additions
Ensure purchased titles are not deleted

22. Selection and Acquisition
Acquisitions
Autopurchased get order record
Order type = patron driven
Firm e-book orders through Gobi
Selection
Avoiding firm ordering duplicates of e-books
When and why firm ordering a PDA e-book makes sense
Acquisitions process for auto-purchased titles: Acq librarian receives alert from PDA vendor when an autopurchase is triggered. The record is already in the catalog, so she attaches a new order record without a pay statement (the payment comes from the deposit account). The cost of the book goes in the estimated price field and we’ve created a new order type “patron driven” to track these kinds of purchases.
This is where the integration with the book vendor is critical. Although selectors can become familiar with the list of publishers included in your program, publisher’s full lists are usually not included.
Be clear that firm ordering PDA e-book is NOT ordering a duplicate
Selection: implications for Sci about 30% of what I would firm order is available in our PDA
There are times that a selector will firm order an ebook in the PDA collection. If we KNOW a book will be used then firm ordering the ebook avoids the short term loan costs (usually 15% of the list price for each loan). If the book has been requested for reserve or by a faculty member (sometimes). We would ask if the faculty member would be ok w an ebook and then firm order. The ebook looks no different to the user but we have avoided some cost.

23. Funding to date Sept 2009 to Feb 2011 = $38,500
STL = $20,000
Autopurchases = $18,500
35% humanities, 26% science, 39% social sciences
Does not include firm EBL orders (done through YBP)
Average transaction cost
$8 per COUNTER use
$18 per combined STL/AP charges

24. Funding into the future
PDA is successful and therefore a priority
Will fund from monograph lines
Correspond to HUM/SCI/SOC usage
Estimate FY12 usage based on FY11, with ?% increase to cover additional content
Should de-dupe against ebrary subscription collection annually

25. Collection Management
Managing PDA – making titles ‘visible’ – in place of some firm orders
Monitor STL and autopurchases for appropriateness of titles, remove unwanted titles/subjects (e.g., knitting, travel guides)
Need to evaluate overlap with print approval plan
Compare availability by publisher
Compare e- vs. print use

26. Collection Management: Statistics
Of ~45,000 titles, Sept 2009 – Feb 2011
3763 browsed
1778 STLs (47%)
196 autopurchases (11% of STLs, 5% of browsed)
Working with EBL & YBP to determine overlap, availability dates, and use comparisons between PDA & print orders (AP, firm)

27. Public Services Implications
Marketing: We didn’t!
Why not?
Patrons just don’t need to know
Nervous about running up costs from patrons’ curiosity
Some patrons don’t want responsibility of spending library $$

28. Public Services Implications: Benefits
Noticeable increase in content
ex/ use as discovery tool
Full-text keyword searching across e-book collection
Ability to make titles immediately visible
Often satisfies the ‘library should have this’ issue

29. Public Services Implications
Challenges are those of E-books in general; not unique to PDA:
User interfaces and printing issues
Image quality / not optimal for visual material
Inability to browse stacks
Growing complexity of delivery channels / managing user expectations

30. “I'm actually happy to find ebooks … when I'm working from home, it's a great way to do the work I need to do without dragging myself into the library, but I would like us to keep buying the actual books, too.”
--Art History faculty member