Not Your Mother’s PDA: The Transition from PDA Pilot to Full Acquisitions Integration

Abstract

Western Libraries and Ingram Content Group worked together to establish a Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) program that has been incorporated into the regular acquisitions workflow at Western. Some features of the program include: all titles selected for addition to the PDA collection are filtered through the approval profiles established by the librarians, the library's holdings are uploaded to Ingram weekly so that duplicate titles are avoided, invoices for purchased PDA titles are sent weekly, and holdings for un-purchased and purchased PDA records are updated weekly. A PDA Working Group established the program at Western by meeting with collections librarians to assist with profile adjustments and ease concerns of how this method of acquisition would impact the collection. The Working Group is monitoring the program and gathering data to assess the impact of PDA. In addition to collecting information about titles loaded and titles purchased, an online survey to assess user response to e-books is continuing. Western and Ingram have continued to work together closely to ensure the program is successful and to make profile adjustments as necessary.