The Promise of PDA

As Faith’s introductory post suggests, Patron-Driven Acquisitions (PDA) is not a perfect model for developing a library’s collection, nor is it universally accepted. However, PDA is a very promising option for academic and research libraries, for a number of reasons – several of which I will outline below (and perhaps our readers will add to this list, as you explore this topic with us!) 

At the core of the promise of PDA lies an essential component – the patron!  A library is not a library without the people who inhabit it.  As academic librarian and library blogger Rick Anderson (2011) reminds us, “the purpose of the collection isn’t to be a great collection; it’s to connect patrons with exactly what they need.”  A deep and broad collection, developed with care by subject-expert librarians and faculty who have the rich past, current landscape and future possibilities of various disciplines in mind is a great gift to teaching, learning and research, without a doubt.  But from a user perspective, such "just in case” collections do have their limitations – and PDA opens up new, 21st century possibilities in a powerful way!

PDA meets patrons’ actual information and workflow needs.

           

Imagine that it is a Thursday, around 1am.  You (night owl that you are) are working on a project for class, and you have found a number of related materials in the library’s online catalog, but only one that seems like it would be helpful for your current needs.  You could put it on hold online, and head to the library tomorrow to retrieve the book; plus, once there, you might certainly find additional items that would be of use on the shelves (there are a good number of print resources that go decades back, related to this general topic).  However, you’ve also “googled” your topic and found other academic resources, both ebooks and articles, that would be even more relevant for your current research – but your library doesn’t have those as part of its collection.  You could fill out an interlibrary loan request, but who knows exactly how long that would take…

But now imagine that you can log into the library's website from home (at 1am on a Thursday), and search a catalogue that has been expanded to include tens (if not hundreds!) of thousands of additional titles, both ebooks and journal articles - because of the library’s recent decision to include PDA in its acquisition procedures.  As you search the catalogue, you find a number of relevant items (you may even find yourself surprised by this wealth of information!) – and what’s more, you can download the full text version right away!

Such are the differences, for the library patron, between the “just in case” and “just in time” collection approaches that Faith outlined above.  The "just in case" collection indeed has a wealth of materials – but they may not be as immediately relevant as the researcher might like them to be.  The "just in time" approach of PDA has far greater potential to meet each patron's information needs, both in their specificity, and in the actual moment of need.

Professional librarians may understandably have concerns about the quality of additions to the collection, with such a “just in time” approach.  However, at least one study has indicated that librarians need not be concerned about the quality of the items selected by patrons; though the patron’s aims may be different than the librarian’s (i.e., satisfying an immediate need, instead of focusing on the long-term contributions the library collection will make to teaching, learning and research), patron selected materials appear to be comparably appropriate in terms of content and recommended use within an academic library environment (Shen, 2011, p. 216).  Further, with such an approach, perhaps precisely because most patron’s choices will be based upon what they are doing in the classroom or for current academic research, “not only are the requesting patrons’ needs satisfied, but also it is highly likely that those books will interest other patrons in the future” (Nixon, 2010, p. 120).

PDA increases access to – and accessing of – information.

           

If you’re like me (since pretty much all of the readers of this blog are preparing to become professional librarians!), you may relish the opportunity to wander through a library’s stacks whenever you have the time; you never know what you might discover there!  The possibilities are great, and there’s nothing comparable to that familiar sight, smell and feel of so much knowledge housed in one place (just in case).  And, if you’re like me, you probably spend a good amount of time on the Internet, and you are very comfortable with the ins-and-outs of searching for relevant materials on the Web – not to mention a library’s online catalog.  PDA provides the opportunity to combine a library’s print resources with so many more important learning, teaching and research opportunities, via an expansive electronic environment.  As Rick Lugg (2011) points out, when libraries incorporate PDA, “a much broader array of titles is potentially available in a discovery environment with which users are already familiar” (p. 13).  The possibilities for access to information are that much greater, because so many more (again, perhaps hundreds of thousands more) titles are “discoverable” than in a traditional “just in case” model, because the catalogue of titles, both ebooks and academic journals, expands far beyond the library’s material holdings.

Lugg (2011) has also noted that access to this familiar, expansive electronic information environment will likely result in library users not just having the potential to access, but actually accessing, a greater amount of information.  Lugg reports that in a recent study of an academic library, his company “encountered graphic evidence” of the significant use of electronic, downloadable library resources: “In one year, this library circulated 426,937 items, including renewals.  Even at this seemingly robust level, circulation had declined 45.9% between 2003 and 2009.  In the same year, however, the library experienced 2,422,024 downloads.”  This stunning 6:1 ratio indicates a “preference for remote electronic access over physical check-out” (p. 9).  To this blogger, it also indicates a great hunger on the behalf of academic library users for access to the wealth of information that is available across the vast network of information resources.  PDA helps libraries offer just that! 

What is more, PDA increases access to information in a diversity of settings, across the nation and the globe.  Steiner and Berry (2011), sharing their experiences with PDA from an international context, offer this testimony:

“One of the challenges for the [Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy] library, as with all new libraries was the need to have a viable collection from day one.  Traditionally, building a viable opening-day collection takes years and for a library of any scale, millions of dollars.  With PDA, literally overnight, the library’s catalogue could (and did, in fact) go from 10,000 items to over 150,000 items, and at no [immediate] cost” (p. 88). 

Freedom of information can be at stake here, too; in certain international settings, students, faculty and researchers can now have access – via PDA – to information that might be considered controversial or sensitive.  In this electronic environment, such materials are available but not on the shelf, with a greatly decreased risk of being stumbled upon by someone who might seek to censor them; and because such materials are not actually “owned” by the library, if they do ultimately need to be removed the library may do so, at no cost to the institution (Steiner and Berry, 2011, p. 87).

PDA meets people where they’re at – literally! 

All of the bloggers on this site – and many of those who will join us in conversation – are distance learners, with Wayne State University’s School of Library and Information Science.  PDA offers distance students like us the opportunity to access a vast wealth of library resources from miles away.  PDA can also be an important library offering for students, teachers and researchers who may not be exclusively working in an online environment, but whose life circumstances and workflow habits are such that access to information when they need it, wherever they are, may be a tremendous gift.  From our 1am researcher above, to a single parent of three with a full-time job, to a faculty member who frequently travels abroad – PDA offers possibilities for “just in time” teaching, learning and research resources in a way that may not otherwise be possible.

PDA also meets the current generation of traditional college students “where they’re at,” simply because it mirrors the world they know.   Circulation of print books appears to be decreasing significantly among younger library users, who are born into a Web 2.0 world, and for whom “just in time” information almost appears to be a birthright!  Citing a 2010 study by the Cornell University Task Force on Print Collection Usage, Lugg (2011) shares a statistic indicating that “only 10.5% of books checked out from Cornell’s libraries were in the hands of undergraduates” (p. 10).  For academic libraries to keep up with young undergraduates – and therefore the graduate student and faculty populations that will grow from within those ranks – PDA indeed appears to have tremendous promise!

PDA creates space for the patrons!

Rick Lugg (2011) offers us the important and inspiring reminder that even as fewer and fewer young library users may be accessing the print collecti0n, they continue to gather regularly at the library:  “library gate counts are rising, as students congregate in the library to study, work together, visit the writing center and drink coffee.  On most campuses, the library remains an important hub, irrespective of collection use.  Information commons, teaching and learning centers, group study space, information fluency, and other programs are in high demand" (p. 8).  Librarians have an opportunity to foster teaching and learning in new and important ways, as we seek to carefully balance our collection development procedures between print resources and the myriad offerings available through PDA.  Simply put, space that is not taken up by books, journals and other print materials can – and likely will – be occupied by students, teachers and researchers, actively engaging each other (and librarians, too!) in learning community.

PDA has the potential to save libraries time and money.

Steiner and Berry (2011) encourage us that “adopting the PDA model is a great help in building a new library quickly and with vast financial and time savings” (p. 80).  Indeed, there are significant costs (in both money and time) associated with the building and management of a print collection; for instance, there is the cost of purchasing, shipping, customs clearance (in some cases), processing, shelving and stacks maintenance, preservation, and more – and, of course, the staffing needs for all of these important tasks.  PDA, on the other hand, offers a great deal of flexibility, along with the opportunity to build a collection with far more breadth and depth than a library’s print collection might provide, “and it can be done at little financial risk,” and in far less time (Steiner and Berry, 2011, p. 93).

There is, of course, no guarantee that PDA will ultimately cost less than a traditional “just in case” collection development model; patron-selected materials may vary significantly in terms of cost-per-item, and individual libraries may indeed have to filter their PDA offerings in order to stretch their dollars toward the best possible outcomes (Shen, 2011, p. 214).   However – as Rick Anderson (2011) reminds us – even if the actual collection-building costs of PDA are comparable to more traditional methods, PDA will nonetheless help to ensure that the money we spend will go directly to information that our patrons actually need.  What is more, releasing some of the funds that would otherwise go towards a more traditional collection development model allows a library to allocate its funds in more creative ways, to meet the needs and interests of patrons in a 21^st century teaching and learning environment!

PDA may be a key player in the transformation of libraries!

There will be more on this in another post – but it’s important to touch upon here, as a final shout out to the promise of PDA.   Again, patron-driven acquisitions is not a panacea for all of a library’s challenges, nor is it the ultimate path to meeting a library’s hopes and dreams for the future.  But, with all of the potential benefits that PDA offers – from meeting patrons’ actual information needs and meeting them “where they’re at;” to creating space in the budget and in the building itself for new programs, places and possibilities; to fostering access to and the freedom of information – PDA is indeed a promising way forward.  For PDA can help to ensure that rather than simply being a “warehouse for unused books,” our academic and research libraries will instead remain a “vital part of teaching, learning and research outcomes” (Lugg, 2011, p. 9).

References

Anderson, R. (2011). What Patron-Driven Acquisition (PDA) Does and Doesn’t Mean: An FAQ.  The Scholarly Kitchen. Retrieved from http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2011/05/31/what-patron-driven-acquisition-pda-does-and-doesnt-mean-an-faq/

Lugg, R. (2011).  Collecting for the Moment: Patron-Driven Acquisitions as a Disruptive Technology.  In David A. Swords (Ed.), Patron-Driven Acquisitions: History and Best Practices (pp. 7-22).  Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter Saur.

Nixon, J., Freeman, R. and Ward, S. (2010). Patron-Driven Acquisitions: An Introduction and Literature Review. Collection Management (35:3-4), pp. 119-124.

Shen, L., Cassidy, E., Elmore, E., Griffin, G., Manolovitz, T., Martinez, M., & Turney, L. (2011). Head first into the patron-driven acquisition pool: A comparison of librarian selections versus patron purchases. Journal Of Electronic Resources Librarianship, 23(3), 203-218.

Steiner, R. and R. Berry (2011).  Building New Libraries on the International Stage: The Near and Middle East.  In David A. Swords (Ed.), Patron-Driven Acquisitions: History and Best Practices (pp. 79-93).  Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter Saur.