Both academic and public libraries have struggled to cope with declining budgets while facing continuing demands to meet the needs of their patrons. With the amount of literature being published continuing to grow, it gets harder with every passing month for libraries refine their purchasing strategy. One of the most interesting ways of dealing with the Scylla and Charybdis issue of too many books, and too little money, is called Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA), or sometimes Patron Driven Access, depending on where emphasis is placed.

Basically, PDA is a way of crowd-sourcing acquisition. In most scenarios, a set of potentially available titles is loaded into a library catalog, and then once a specified number of library patrons request the title, it is automatically ordered for the collection. There are a wide number of permutations; for example, initial requests arriving prior to the purchase threshold may still be able to obtain the book if the library consents to rent the title from a distributor or aggregator. PDA models have become increasingly sophisticated; one of the most astute analysts for the academic market is Joe Esposito, who has blogged on PDA several times at SSRC’s Scholarly Kitchen.

PDA is particularly suited for titles where a library’s acquisition strategy is unclear; this makes it very attractive in the academic market where the challenge of matching faculty research interests with narrowly focused literature is often informed guesswork. Since major frontlist releases are de rigueur purchases for public libraries, it is difficult to see simple PDA schemes working for the next Franzen novel. Other strategies may be better suited to control the roller coaster demand for literary bestsellers, such as combinations of upfront purchase with flexible rental. Continue reading →