Patron Driven Acquisitions in the Lewis Library

For years libraries have acquired print and nonprint materials for their collections with a strong hope that people will one day remove them from the shelf and check them out.  The end result is too often a philosophy of “buy it and, hopefully, they will come!”  The Lewis Library is turning all of that upside down.  Although we continue to buy print materials, in many cases we are now selecting e-books over print material.   It is evident from the statistics we gather that e-books are witnessing tremendous growth in usage.

The Lewis Library is embarking on an exciting new chapter regarding acquisitions.  This past week we loaded nearly 5,000 new Ebrary e-book titles to our catalog.  Over the next few weeks students and faculty accessing the library’s catalog should notice a marked increase in the number of titles available for their particular area of interest.

We are instigating a patron driven acquisitions (PDA) system whereby librarians identify appropriate publishers and e-book titles for the various disciplines, but the purchase of those materials is postponed until they are actually used.  Titles added for the Ebrary patron driven acquisitions or short term loan program will be available for the library user to browse the contents or index as much as they like without the library incurring a charge.  However, when a particular Ebrary title’s actual text is viewed for more than 10 minutes a short term loan (ONE WEEK) will be triggered.   The library will be charged a very nominal fee for a short term loan.  A second short term loan of that title will automatically result in a purchase and the library’s Ebrary account will be charged for the purchase.

The patron driven acquisition system allows us to offer LaGrange College students and faculty significantly more resources without paying for them until they are actually used.  We now have a system that allows students and faculty to choose what the library purchases and so our collection grows more in the direction of what our users want.

**Authored by Loren Pinkerman