1. Everything You Wanted to
Know about PDA…
… from the Library Perspective
Rick Anderson
Associate Director
Scholarly Resources & Collections

2. Two Broad Categories of “Collection”
 Unique/Curatorial (Special Collections)
 Orientation: Global
 General/Functional (Circulating Collections)
 Orientation: Local
J. Willard Marriott Library

3. How Do We Build Collections?
 Guessing what patrons will want
 Buying documents based on those guesses
 Describing the documents (proxy docs)
 Organizing them
J. Willard Marriott Library

4. Alternatives
 Share. (Ugh.)
 PDA - Books: expose [everything we can] and buy only
when the patron points
 Ebooks (MyiLibrary, NetLibrary, EBL, Ebrary, etc.)
 Print books (LightningSource, OUP, etc.)
 Print books (Espresso Book Machine)
 PDA – Journals: article-based purchasing
 Remember: patrons don’t need journals; they need articles
 This is the opposite of the Big Deal: it’s the Tiny Deal
 Problem: publishers don’t want to sell that way
J. Willard Marriott Library

5. Problems
 Budget management
 What if they select garbage?
 “What about my job?”
J. Willard Marriott Library

6. U of U – Philosophical Context
2. Access to the river, not the pond
4. Access to
whatever/wherever/whenever/however the
patron wants
J. Willard Marriott Library

7. U of U – Experimental History
 30% cut to materials budget in FY09
 Adopted e-first/patron-first guidelines
 PDA experiments:
 MyiLibrary
 Ebrary
 EBL
 NetLibrary
 YBP (with EBL)
J. Willard Marriott Library

8. U of U – Experimental History
 E-first
 $640,000 on ebooks in FY2011
 Patron-first
 $299,000 on PDA in FY2011
 Print-on-demand
 Espresso Book Machine
J. Willard Marriott Library

9. Outsourcing Selection
Demand-Driven Acquisition via YBP/EBL
Records for notification forms loaded into
catalog
Patron use triggers 24-hour “loan” at 10% of
list price; third use triggers purchase at list
Selection teams continue to receive
notifications
J. Willard Marriott Library

10. Problems
 Too many vendors/platforms/models
 Too few front-list titles available as ebooks
 Too little money for true, comprehensive PDA
 EspressNet metadata = crap
 Odd materials still require in-house
processing of various kinds
J. Willard Marriott Library

11. Future of Acquisitions at U of U
 Less of it mediated by librarians and based
on librarians’ speculation
 More of it occurring “just in time”
 Less of it involving physical objects (river vs.
pond)
 More granular; less package-y*
* if we can get the prices right
J. Willard Marriott Library

12. Contact:
Rick Anderson
University of Utah
rick.anderson@utah.edu
J. Willard Marriott Library