Evaluating Demand-Driven Acquisitions

156 Pages·2016·1.29 MB·English

by  Laura Costello

Evaluating
Demand-Driven
Acquisitions
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Evaluating
Demand-Driven
Acquisitions

LAURA COSTELLO
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BIOGRAPHY
Laura Costello is a librarian with a passion for applying new technolo-
gies and data analysis to library materials and service. As Head of Library
Materials & Acquisitions at Teachers College, Columbia University, she
managed a fully demand-driven, digital-first acquisitions environment that
leveraged digital resources toward on-demand service. Laura currently
serves as the Head of Research & Emerging Technologies at Stony Brook
University where she works to apply new technologies to existing library
and education practice. Her research interests include data and demand-
driven strategies for acquisitions and other library management decisions,
emerging technologies in libraries, education technology, and designing
digital and physical library learning spaces.
vii
PREFACE
Demand-driven acquisitions (DDA) describes any acquisitions process that
is driven by the desires of patrons or their usage of materials rather than
predictive processes like package purchases and librarian selection. DDA
is commonly used to refer to the catalog-integrated ebook programs that
emerged with major vendors clustered around 2010–11, but the idea of
DDA can be applied to many workflows that examine usage to inform
purchasing across all formats including digital and physical monographs,
serials, media materials, and other resources. For clarity, this book will use
the abbreviation DDA to refer to all of these processes, though patron-
driven acquisitions (PDA), purchase on demand, patron-initiated purchas-
ing, and customer-based collection development are also commonly used
in the research on this topic.
This volume will begin with a short history of DDA programs in
libraries and their place in the landscape of acquisitions today. We will go
on to discuss options for beginning and adjusting DDA programs with an
eye towards the evaluation of these programs. This volume is intended to
assist librarians and library professionals in assessing existing DDA pro-
grams, expanding their DDA with new processes, and setting up DDA
programs for the first time. We will accomplish this through an examina-
tion of the research organized around several assessment criteria and then
discuss the implications of DDA for different types of libraries. There are
many ways to assess acquisitions strategies including cost, the immediate
use of resources, the permanent value of the collection, and factors that
impact processing workflows. DDA research has examined each of these
factors in depth and across a variety of different library types and user
groups.
When the librarians at the University of Arizona were developing
metrics for assessing their own DDA program, they used five categories
to contextualize the data they withdrew from the DDA records: financial
metrics, resource metrics, performance metrics, patron metrics, and usage
metrics. This zoning helped them establish goals for their program and
then assess the progress toward those goals.
The financial metrics explored both cost per use and other cost factors
like the processing cost to the institution, and cost per Library of Congress
subject area. Patron metrics focused on both patron satisfaction and patron
ix
x Preface
actions in the data. Performance metrics examined how vendors met their
own set standards for service. Usage metrics measured circulation and
use. Resource metrics examined how well the collection met collection
development standards and how likely it was to be a healthy and well-used
collection into the future (Dewland & See, 2015). This represents a com-
prehensive basic framework for creating an assessment program for DDA
and existing DDA research can provide a context for beginning evaluation
frameworks in each of these areas.
The examination of the research in this volume will loosely follow
the University of Arizona model by thoroughly investigating the research
on the financial aspects of DDA, collection standards and diversity issues,
usage, and library issues like preservation and workflow. These sections
should provide an analysis of the research in each of these areas and serve
as a foundation for the evaluation of individual DDA programs. Though
there is not enough research to make conclusive judgments about how
DDA programs should be set up and proceed, the case studies in this sec-
tion will be useful for comparison in evaluating existing DDA programs
and as models for new programs.
Assessment is often not considered until DDA programs are already
well underway, but goal setting and evaluation can be useful at any stage
of the process, especially during planning. This volume will provide a good
foundation for DDA assessment as well as for establishing new DDA pro-
grams using existing data and positioning them for later assessment.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A big thank you to the people at Chandos, especially George Knott, for
guiding me through the first book process.
I would not have been able to publish without the support and men-
torship of my colleagues at the Stony Brook University Libraries, espe-
cially Associate Dean Janet Clarke and Dean Constantia Constantinou.
I am very grateful to Gary Natriello and Hui Soo Chae, at the Gottesman
Libraries at Teachers College, Columbia University, for giving me the
opportunity to manage collections at such a forward-thinking library
and for our continuing collaborations. I would also like to thank Andrew
Medlar at the Chicago Public Libraries for his time and insight in contrib-
uting an interview about the progressive demand-driven programs at his
library to this work.
Thank you to the incredible librarians whose work and research pro-
vided the form and meaning in this volume. In my research for this title I
was always in awe of the progressiveness, experimentation, and curiosity of
library researchers in the face of an uncertain digital future. It’s this spirit
that makes librarianship such a rewarding profession and I am so honored
to be a part of it.
A hearty thanks to my professional clique, Meredith Powers, Dana
Haugh, and Alexandra Lederman, for their friendship and fellowship
in work and life. Thanks to my family for their love and understanding
through this process. Finally, and especially, thanks to Mason Hooten for
believing in me so absolutely.
xi
INTRODUCTION
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 collec-
tions 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 exist-
ing programs and contextualize new ones. This book is meant to guide a
thought process of considering the important aspects of DDA and bench-
marking 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 immedi-
ately 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 per-
centage of our total spending. According to the Association of Research
Libraries Statistics (2012), between 1986 and 2012 library materials expen-
ditures 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 infor-
mation freely available online (Lewis, 2015). The materials our patrons
require are faster than ever to obtain and DDA and other seamless acquisi-
tions 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
xiii
xiv Introduction
as we move in to the future. Even though format types and vendors are
expanding exponentially, libraries are more committed to delivering mate-
rials 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 indi-
vidual 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 librar-
ies 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 encom-
passes 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