[Eril-l] funding for DDA/PDA

Wed Sep 23 08:07:54 PDT 2015

I would dispute the idea that the success of PDA entails an implicit criticism of the performance of librarians.  For years, material budgets have been static or shrinking, making it necessary to be more selective than ever before.   In the past, you may have bought all three books on a topic, now you can only purchase one.  How do you choose?   PDA programs take the pressure off by leaving the final decision to end users.  This makes them a great tool that came at the right moment.

What about the low levels of circulation?

Here’s a situation I see all the time while I’m weeding:  “good” books that haven’t circulated in the last 20 years.  These are books that are listed on standard bibliographies, are referenced in textbooks, and are recognized by subject experts as classics.  There may be a tremendous secondary literature that has grown up around them.  Often they are still in print.  I would stay this constitutes good evidence that these items are “good” and still relevant to their field.  It is most certainly not “it was a good choice because I thought it was a good choice.”  There is objectivity here.

Circulation figures have been dropping at my library for years.  Why?  Have the librarians been getting worse at collection development?  The reasons are potentially legion.  Our students could be less prepared for college.  They could work more and have less time.  They could have ingrained habits of using the internet for school assignments.  Perhaps they are writing fewer term papers, or their assignments are less challenging.  A lot has changed in the last 20 years, much of it not good for the library world.

As a matter of professional philosophy, I think this issue cuts deep.  If librarians are not competent to identify good books, then how can we answer reference questions authoritatively?  How are we different from the internet, other than being slower and a lot more expensive?

--Ken Smith
Head of Acquisitions, Serials & Collection Development
Odum Library
Valdosta State University
1500 North Patterson Street
Valdosta, GA 31698
229-245-3734

From: Eril-l [mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org] On Behalf Of Melissa Belvadi
Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 2015 3:15 PM
To: Smith, Kelly
Cc: eril-l at lists.eril-l.org
Subject: Re: [Eril-l] funding for DDA/PDA

"...it takes the pressure of finding resources off of our liaisons..."

This raises an interesting professional philosophy issue. About half of our librarians are very happy to have that pressure removed, and the other half, mostly the older half, have expressed the concern that a core part of their professional responsibility and expertise is being disrespected and taken away from them.

You have to admit that the fact that we've jumped on patron-driven selection the moment it became technologically and logistically feasible does implicitly criticize the work the librarians have been doing for literally decades, since we abandoned it as soon as we had another choice.

The conversation becomes even more difficult when trying to present them with hard data, as I have done internally, that demonstrates that about half of the books they selected never circulated at all. They get cornered into making absurd arguments like "it doesn't matter if a book doesn't circulate for 50 years, if I thought it was a good choice, it was a good choice."

Melissa

On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 2:24 PM, Smith, Kelly <Kelly.Smith2 at eku.edu<mailto:Kelly.Smith2 at eku.edu>> wrote:
Our philosophy is that if you really want to embrace DDA, you can no longer commit to allocating at the subject level. A few years ago, we stopped allocating for monographs and now only have one large monograph fund. We feared that we might over-spend or not collect in certain areas, but that has not been born out.

In addition to eBook DDA profile programs, we also use demand driven acquisitions for pretty much any resource that is requested via ILL. If requests fit our collecting guidelines, we purchase rather than borrow them.

This approach might not work at every library, but at our regional comprehensive university, it is a good solution for us. In addition to meeting the immediate needs of our students and faculty, it takes the pressure of finding resources off of our liaisons whose time is stretched thin and who are not necessarily specialists in their assigned subjects.

For now, we still assign subject fund codes to everything purchased for tracking purposes.

Kelly Smith
Coordinator of Collections and Discovery
Eastern Kentucky University Libraries
email kelly.smith2 at eku.edu<mailto:kelly.smith2 at eku.edu> | research guides<http://libguides.eku.edu/prf.php?account_id=300>
[EKU-Libraries-Logo---Maroon]<http://www.library.eku.edu/>

From: Eril-l [mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org>] On Behalf Of Melissa Belvadi
Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 2015 12:20 PM
To: Katy Ginanni <ksginanni at email.wcu.edu<mailto:ksginanni at email.wcu.edu>>
Cc: eril-l at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
Subject: Re: [Eril-l] funding for DDA/PDA

Our experience with DDA is that it actually spends far less than everyone fears. So we consider DDA purchases as if the liaisons had firm-ordered them for budget line purposes.  We haven't come anywhere close to the scenario you describe.  If you have to worry about  patrons buying worse choices of books than your liaisons want to select, your DDA profiles are probably too broad.

Melissa Belvadi, UPEI

On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 11:30 AM, Katy Ginanni <ksginanni at email.wcu.edu<mailto:ksginanni at email.wcu.edu>> wrote:
Hi folks,

{Apologies for duplication. I’ll post this to several ists.}

I wonder if anyone out there has come up with some magical scheme or prediction or formula for how to allocate subject or program-based funds to pay for DDA/PDA purchases?

When we started our DDA program, we limited the profile to subjects that would support our distance and/or online programs. We paid for all purchases from one fund. Now we are thinking of expanding the DDA plan to cover all programs, and we’re wondering how to allocate money from the subject/program-based funds. For print books, we’ve been experimenting with an allocation formula that includes several criteria or factors (student credit hours per department, # faculty per department, etc.). But we’re struggling with how to factor in ebooks. How can we predict what we might spend on ebooks and what we should put aside for print books? For example: Let’s say the history department gets $15,000 to spend. Halfway into the year, DDA books have eaten all of that allocation but the liaison still has print books she wants to buy.

Our usage of ebooks – among all purchases, not just the DDA-initiated ones – is spread across many disciplines. That’s why we are thinking about putting additional subject areas in our DDA profile.

Thanks in advance for any insight you can provide.

Katy G.

Katy Ginanni, Acquisitions Librarian & Asst Professor
Hunter Library
Western Carolina University
176 Central Drive
Cullowhee, NC 28723
ksginanni at email.wcu.edu<mailto:ksginanni at email.wcu.edu>
828-227-3729<tel:828-227-3729> office
library.wcu.edu<http://library.wcu.edu>

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--
Melissa Belvadi
Collections Librarian
University of Prince Edward Island
mbelvadi at upei.ca<mailto:mbelvadi at upei.ca> 902-566-0581<tel:902-566-0581>

--
Melissa Belvadi
Collections Librarian
University of Prince Edward Island
mbelvadi at upei.ca<mailto:mbelvadi at upei.ca> 902-566-0581

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