Tuesday, April 28, 2015

More PDA Needed in Libraries (Patron-Driven Acquisition, that is!)

Laudato, Maricar

Ward, S. M. (2014). Patrons: Your new partners in collection development. American Libraries Magazine.

Summary
Suzanne Ward describes how Patron-Driven Acquisition (PDA) can help increase the circulation statistics of the library. The ways in which PDA increases circulation is through purchases triggered by: Interlibrary Loan (ILL) requests, selection from a vendor’s list, and use after discovery as an eBook. Whenever a library receives an ILL request, the library may just purchase the item since it is in demand from its patrons. In regards to eBooks, after patrons check out a particular title in eBook format a particular number of times, the library orders the book since it is in demand.

Evaluation

Ward’s article is another example that underlines the importance of patron input when it comes to developing your library’s collection. Patron participation in the collection development process is critical to not only help foster healthy circulation statistics, but to create a more meaningful collection for our patrons. While Patron-Driven Acquisition will not completely replace the Librarian’s final say in what gets added to the collection, PDA should definitely play a significant role in the acquisition process.

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