Introduction
Abstract
Catalog-integrated ebook demand-driven acquisitions (DDA) has been one of the most significant changes to the acquisitions process of the past decade. DDA is disruptive because it represents a fundamental change to the nature library collection development. This chapter introduces the concept of DDA and outlines the structure of the book. This book is aimed at preparing librarians and library professionals to assess their existing DDA programs using examples from other libraries in the form of research discussions and case studies. This book will also be appropriate for readers that are interested in beginning DDA programs and want to ensure that they build programs with strong assessment strategies and clear goals.
Keywords
Demand-driven acquisitions; research; ebooks; collection development; selection; assessment
Demand-driven acquisitions (DDA) is a strategy that puts the purchasing power in the hands of the patrons either through seamless ebook discovery records integrated into the catalog or through staff- and librarian-mediated programs that collect and interpret patron desires. Since the rise of catalog integration and instantaneous ebook access, DDA has been defined as a distinct acquisitions process, but listening to patrons when making collections decisions has been a part of library practice for as long as librarians have worked to serve our communities. This volume will touch on the historical practice of DDA, but will focus on assessing and evaluating the types of DDA collections and practices found in libraries today.
The purpose of this volume is not to argue for or against DDA as a strategy, since it is already a fact in many libraries, but rather to create a lens from our existing studies of DDA through which we can view existing programs and contextualize new ones. This book is meant to guide a thought process of considering the important aspects of DDA and benchmarking them with data from the research. Methods are mixed and the literature is diverse in this area, but this volume will work hard to wring practical meaning from the DDA research. Each research-focused chapter in the book will end with a summary of questions so readers can immediately apply the research to the context of their own existing or emerging DDA programs.
Libraries are looking to data to inform our purchasing decisions and this is especially important as monograph budgets become a smaller percentage of our total spending. According to the Association of Research Libraries Statistics (2012), between 1986 and 2012 library materials expenditures increased by 322% and much of that was due to the rising prices of serials. DDA is one of the adaptations libraries have used to make this price increase sustainable, along with purchasing at the article or journal level rather than in large packages, embracing open access and institutional repositories, and working to aggregate and promote the quality information freely available online (Lewis, 2015). The materials our patrons require are faster than ever to obtain and DDA and other seamless acquisitions strategies help shape the way we obtain them.
We are entering an age of increasing importance for patron usage data. These data may have an incredible impact on the shape of our collections as we move in to the future. Even though format types and vendors are expanding exponentially, libraries are more committed to delivering materials to patrons at the point of need (Anderson, 2011a). This volume aims to survey what we know about DDA in order to help institutions and researchers assess their own existing programs, know what to look for in new programs, and help evaluate whether DDA is a good move for individual libraries and what impact it may have on libraries in general.
In their history of DDA, Edward Goedeken and Karen Lawson build the case for ebooks as a disruptive technology, one that changes the nature of content delivery in libraries rather than just improving the process. Certainly this is true for the evolution of DDA in libraries, as soon as catalog-integrated ebook DDA became available and obtainable for libraries around 2009–10, the saturation of this technology has only increased (Goedeken & Lawson, 2015). Joseph Esposito described DDA as “…in one sense something that is very new and in another sense not new at all. While it may seem like a radical departure from established practice, librarians have thoughtfully integrated it into their existing operations. It is a refinement, not a repudiation of the library’s gatekeeping function” (Esposito, Walker, & Ehling, 2013). DDA represents a tweak to our existing ideas and workflows that aligns with the digital environment that encompasses many of our acquisitions processes today.
There was a time when print books and journals were very difficult to acquire after their initial entry into the publishing market. In the print publishing market, it made sense for libraries to obtain newly published materials “just in case” because they were most readily available directly after publication. As soon as a book went out of print or the next issue of a journal was released, it became much more difficult to acquire those items via normal channels. There was an advantage to acquiring that information and preserving it for the future that helped balance the cost of purchasing materials even if they had no guarantee of circulation or even indication of specific use.
The rise of digital monographs and serials has made it possible to acquire our most important formats for patrons within days if not hours. The ability to purchase materials at the point of need and only in the quantity desired by patrons is transforming the way that librarians think about their collection development strategies. Monograph purchasing for both digital and physical materials has become the fastest way to obtain these materials. There have long been physical book-loaning programs between libraries and these programs still have a strong place in library practice, but interlibrary loan and sharing programs are costly to maintain and the wear and tear of travel depreciate the value of physical materials. The combination of speed, lowered costs, and circulation advantages means that purchasing requested materials has become competitive with loaning programs in some libraries (Zopfi-Jordan, 2008).
The process of purchasing other types of resources has also changed through digitization. It is now quick and cost-effective to obtain single journal title digital subscriptions and even single article copies and temporary, pay-per-view access to single articles for patrons. DDA has extended beyond traditional monograph and serial purchases to encompass a wide variety of digital objects including video, audio, and media.
The availability of digital materials minimizes the risks of not buying material when it is first published. These changes have accompanied a change in the way patrons and librarians find information online. The development of alternative search engines means researchers may begin their research outside the library and use their results to search library catalogs rather than approaching information-seeking based on the materials the library already has in stock. DDA is a fruitful strategy for supporting these researchers because discovery catalogs facilitate access to a wider range of resources. By diversifying channels for obtaining information, libraries can satisfy both the patrons using the catalog for research and those looking elsewhere for materials to bring back to library resources. Information is continually expanding beyond what libraries can provide for patrons and instead of aspiring to create complete collections, librarians should work to build well-balanced, focused, patron-centered, and adaptive collections that will be able to flex to accommodate further changes in practice.
Michael Levine-Clark describes this vision in his article “Access to Everything: Building the Future Academic Library Collection.” The library collection, in Levine-Clark’s understanding, “instead of being material that is either owned or leased by the library, the collection will be anything that the library can reasonably expect to deliver to students or faculty” (Levine-Clark, 2014). Ebooks have transformed our ideas about how collections should be built and maintained and DDA is one tool in this arsenal.
In Sonia Bodi and Katie Maier-O’Shea’s investigation into postmodern collection assessment strategies, they call attention to the fact that traditional acquisitions strategies rely on expectation, linearity, and control to function and letting go of some of that rigidity is necessary for libraries to adapt to the blurred lines of the resources that patrons now require (Bodi & Maier-O’Shea, 2005). Research is increasingly interdisciplinary, interformat, collaborative, inclusive, and adaptive, and collection management should mirror these trends. DDA and collection assessment can both help us meet these goals by providing an understanding of what patrons require and a means to narrow down our ideas into purchases through use.
Some of the criticisms of DDA programs touch on the loss of control that librarian selectors experience when turning purchasing decisions over to patrons. With greater assessment and control of these programs, librarians can help guide the collection-building process even though the day-to-day collection decisions are driven by the patrons. Libraries are still at the beginning of this journey, but with many early catalog-integrated DDA programs reaching their fifth or sixth year, the time has come to do some deep thinking about the role of this acquisitions strategy in individual libraries and in the profession as a whole. A robust framework for assessment will help libraries plan for and build DDA programs that work and adapt to future changing needs. It is important to build assessment and goal-setting into the plans for DDA, but this proposition is intimidating and complex. Though DDA might not satisfy all of our higher orders of collection building, it frequently seems like it embodies the American Library Association’s original motto, “The best reading for the largest number at the least cost” (Wiegand, 1999).
This book is an attempt to glean potentially actionable benchmarks from the DDA literature. The research on DDA strategy and DDA case studies in libraries has increased exponentially over the past 5 years and many of these studies contain data and outcomes that alone may not be generally applicable. This volume will work to combine the existing DDA research in an attempt to gather knowledge about best practices and benchmarks to help practitioners considering implementing DDA strategies in their libraries or looking to formally assess existing programs. Though it is still difficult to draw generalizable conclusions from the existing data there are trends to observe and a lot that practitioners can learn from the methods and adjustments of other programs to evaluate and tweak their own strategies towards fruitful collection building.
The first section of the book addresses the context in which DDA developed and outlines the types of DDA that can be found in research. It also describes setting up DDA programs and the parameters of the collection profile that have influence on the rate standards of purchasing. This section will be useful for libraries that are beginning to develop DDA programs, but also libraries that wish to reexamine their basic parameters in order to influence spending and selection. The second section of the book is a discussion of the research which will break down case studies and findings by assessment parameter: cost, collection diversity, collection standards, usage, and workflow issues. The third section of the book focuses on issues and research specific to different types of libraries including academic, public, and specialized library DDA and DDA issues specific to consortia. Each research-focused chapter will be followed by a list of potential questions from the discussion that readers can apply to their own library programs as a foundation for beginning assessment and evaluation.
DDA is a cost-effective and appropriate strategy in many libraries, but certainly there will be programs for which DDA is not cost-effective and there will also be programs where DDA is cost-effective but not appropriate. The purpose of this title is to give context and framework for evaluating DDA programs on a variety of criteria. The work of creating a successful program for DDA is in tailoring this strategy to the specific needs and goals of each institution and adjusting the program through assessment until it meets those needs and goals. In many libraries this means adapting the criteria of the pilot and tailoring options to particular disciplines, users, or workflows. Librarians approaching DDA programs often do so to deliver better materials to patrons at a lower cost (Booth & O’Brien, 2011). What this means for each individual library is a process of discovery that should come before the start of a DDA program, but should not end with the pilot. There are many things that we can learn from looking more deeply at the goals, outcomes, and future directions of our collection development processes.