Don't Fear the Reader: Librarian versus Interlibrary Loan Patron-Driven Acquisition of Print Books at an Academic Library by Relative Collecting Level and by Library of Congress Classes and Subclasses.

Zatko, Ruzena

Tyler, D. C., Melvin, J. C., Epp, M., & Kreps, A. M. (2014). Don't Fear the Reader: Librarian versus Interlibrary Loan Patron-Driven Acquisition of Print Books at an Academic Library by Relative Collecting Level and by Library of Congress Classes and Subclasses. College & Research Libraries, 75(5), 684-704. doi:10.5860/crl.75.5.684

 

Summary

 

Tyler et al. 2014 discuss to not have a lot of Patron Driven Acquisition because it will weaken the collection as a whole. It is important to be selective with the patrons requests because the librarian should focus on the strength of the collection. The research tested to see what the impact would be if 1/2 of acquisitions were patron driven over a 5 year cycle, which did not show a significant difference to the quality of the collection.

 

 

Evaluation

 

As an acquisitions librarian, its important to make right decisions for the collection. A large focus on patron-driven material can hurt the collection and hardly belongs in the academic library. In a library researched, it demonstrated that 30% of patrons were using materials for recreational use rather than academic use when the library had more patron-driven options. The researchers wanted to delve deeper and see what would happen over a five year period if the acquisitions were 50% patron driven and 50% demand. However, this proved to not off set the collection. The limitation in the research is that it was a single-site survey. Also, with the data it is hard to say how long it would take for there to be an imbalance in the Patron Driven Acquisitions.