[Eril-l] looking for group wisdom on Patron Driven Acquisition: limiting by publisher

[Swindler, Luke]

In my view questions about DDA publisher exclusions need to be related to the library’s goals for its DDA.

UNC Chapel Hill campus libraries implemented a Demand-Driven Acquisitions (DDA) e-books program in order to achieve the following goals:

  *   • Improve support for the academic enterprise by presenting faculty and students with a large number of potentially useful and relevant e-books for possible acquisition, with the aggregate number and cost of titles in the DDA being well beyond what campus libraries could ever afford to buy;
  *   • Align monographic acquisitions more closely with active instructional and research needs;
  *   • Target collections dollars to meet actual needs based on patron use, especially since studies consistently demonstrate that books selected by users have a higher level of use than those librarians select;
  *   • Get a better and broad-based sense of the patrons’ acceptance of e-books and their willingness to use them (backed with actual data), which advances UNC’s user-focused, evidence-based and metrically informed collections philosophy; and
  *   • Save subject librarians’ time selecting and technical services staff's time processing monographs, especially for publishers where few titles are automatically shipped and/or selected.

Within this context, coupled with the fact that reducing monographic expenditures per se was not a consideration, UNC opted for a robust DDA publisher pool with only a few exclusions:

  *   • Publisher was categorically objectionable because of quality and/or relevance; and
  *   • Publisher e-books were being acquired en bloc via packages rather than on a title-by-titles basis.

In addition, the level of publisher exclusions is influenced by vendor options for eliminating inappropriate specific titles from the DDA pool.  UNC decided to implement its DDA with only EBL as the content provider (because of the many options available in its LibCentral administrative module) and to do so via YBP (because of its many subject and non-subject parameter filter options) rather than directly with the content provider.  As a rule, the more robust the filtering options, the more expansive the DDA universe of relevant publishers can be.

Finally, publisher exclusions (as well as DDA profile complexity) should be influenced by the emphasis at library places on eliminating an occasional inappropriate title that might get into the DDA pool.  If the philosophy is based on “good-enough” solutions and keeping transactions costs low, then a minimal level of inappropriate DDA titles is fine—especially if they result in little use and/or low expenditures.  (N.B.  Here the perfect is the enemy of the good!)

Luke Swindler


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Luke Swindler                               Collections Management Officer
Davis Library    CB #3918                        luke_swindler at unc.edu<mailto:luke_swindler at unc.edu>
University of North Carolina                           TEL (919-962-1095)
Chapel Hill, NC  27514   USA                        FAX (919-962-4450)
*************************************************“*****************************
"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most
intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.” Charles Darwin

On Dec 15, 2014, at 5:17 PM, Karen Jensen <kljensen at alaska.edu<mailto:kljensen at alaska.edu>> wrote:

When we first started doing PDA for electronic books, we didn't limit on publishers. After seeing some titles we would never have purchased, I put in limits by publisher. Then I realized that the actual uses of non-academic titles was so minimal, that it didn't really matter; the total cost of these titles was tiny in proportion to the whole. I have left the publisher limit, but some titles still come through that we would not have ever purchased in print. It's just not enough to worry about. I guess that would be my advice; is it enough to warrant spending your time analyzing? If so, then publisher is an easy way to start.



On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 12:49 PM, Mary Beeker <mbeeker at nmc.edu<mailto:mbeeker at nmc.edu>> wrote:
Sorry if this isn't the best place to ask this question, please let me know if I should post elsewhere...

Can anyone share their philosophy/advice on including publishers in their PDA collection?
We've had some rude shocks seeing what is available in our new PDA collection.  We're wondering whether to exclude publishers from the entire PDA profile, or perhaps to include publishers in certain call number ranges, but not in others (e.g. our clinical nursing section)

We're a community college, so we need some intro-level books, but reliability is key to us.

If this becomes an interesting discussion, I'm happy to collect responses and share them.

Thanks all!
- Mary

--
Mary Beeker
Northwestern Michigan College - Osterlin Library
mbeeker at nmc.edu<mailto:mbeeker at nmc.edu>
(231) 995-1015<tel:%28231%29%20995-1015>

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--
Karen Jensen
Collection Development
Rasmuson Library
University of Alaska Fairbanks
907-474-6695
kljensen at alaska.edu<mailto:kljensen at alaska.edu>

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