End Users/Usage Statistics

By Popular Demand: Building a Consortial Demand‐Driven Program

Xan Arch et al.

The Orbis Cascade Alliance set out to create an e‐book program for its 36 member libraries. Unlike the single-library patron‐driven acquisition programs that we have seen in the past, this ambitious pilot needed to take into account the different discovery options and workflow requirements of 36 libraries and their varying size and technical capabilities. We will discuss the ideal makeup of an implementation team for a program of this size, how to assess the technical hurdles and what training must be provided, how to work with vendors effectively in this setting, and how to evaluate the success of a patron‐driven program, both during the program and afterward. We will include lessons learned that are applicable both to individual libraries considering patron‐driven programs and to consortia looking to provide a similar service to their libraries.

Patron‐Driven E‐book Solutions: Moving Beyond the Banana Books Incident

Gabrielle Wiersma et al.

The University of Colorado Boulder Libraries participated in one of the first patron‐driven acquisition initiatives offered by netLibrary in the late 1990s. One outcome of this patron‐driven pilot was the banana books incident which has now become part of popular collection development lore. This incident will be described more fully and will highlight the difficulties of establishing demand‐driven models that are divorced from an institution’s approval plans. More recently, the University of Colorado has taken the lessons learned from the banana books snafu and has developed institution specific solutions for patron selection and use of e‐books. This paper will discuss strategies for integrating e‐books into subject and publisher based approval profiles with Ingram‐Coutts and the My iLibrary platform. The paper will also address the complexities of customizing 70 profiles that are a combination of print, e‐preferred, e‐patron‐driven with Coutts and 30 selectors.

Giving Them What They Need (and Want): Computer Science and Engineering Customers

Ellen Safley

Demand-Driven Success: Designing Your PDA Experiment

Charles Hillen et al.

Initiating demand-driving acquisition is daunting. Implications for developing a sustainable budget model, choosing a vendor, controlling metadata, monitoring purchases and developing invoice workflows are significant areas of concern that require determinative planning. From mid-February through August 2011, Loyola Marymount University conducted a pilot using demand-driven acquisition; the result of this successful experiment was the library’s decision to fully integrate this purchasing model into its operations. In this session, we will share our process and qualifying decision criteria for configuring the experiment, monitoring its progress and assessing the results. Using an already established vendor, we assessed the purchase trigger model, controlled the number of titles in disciplines profiled, created a process for identifying and suppressing bibliographic records, developed a workflow for payment, and created a reporting format to monitor expenditures and content purchased. We will demonstrate how careful planning allowed us to safeguard against over expenditure and confidently expand or curtail use of the budget in a highly responsive fashion. The presentation will also examine other factors that influenced the experiment, such as the research environment and support from administration, and explain our marketing perspective and desirable outcomes for collection building.

Partnering for Patron‐Driven Acquisitions: What You Need to Know

Ashley Bailey et al.

Vendors are offering to facilitate patron‐driven acquisitions. Should your approval vendor be your PDA partner? After collaborating with YBP as a beta site for demand‐driven acquisitions for ebrary electronic books, we can share with you what we have learned from our first‐hand experiences. Through this practical presentation we will detail why we chose to partner with a vendor, how we got started, and the decisions necessary to implement the service. We’ll share the record profiles that we designed, and the workflows we developed and revised. In addition to covering the planning process, we’ll cover the first six months of this project from the date of implementation. You’ll hear the viewpoints of the vendor, the acquisitions professional, Technical Services Librarian, and the Collection Development Librarian. Learn the key ingredients to a successful PDA program, what an approval vendor has to offer in the way of support, and how our PDA partnership is working for us.

Untapped Resources: Graduate Assistants and Collection Development

Lily Todorinova et al.

In response to budgetary crises, academic libraries are often forced to relegate traditionally professional librarian duties to student assistants, paraprofessionals, and other support staff. Among the newly transferred roles is collection development including the analysis, selection, and maintenance of materials and resources. Review of the literature reveals that this trend has substantially grown over past years; however, the scope and level of responsibility of the transferred projects has been limited. Additionally, the literature severely lacks mention of the roles played by graduate students working in academic libraries, while pursuing their MLIS degrees. The objective of this session is to explore the use of graduate student assistants working toward their MLIS degree in the conduction of complex collection evaluation, selection, and analysis from the perspective of one graduate student assistant and one professional academic librarian. The attendees will learn about the benefits of involving graduate student assistants in the collection development process, in terms of the need to acquire hands on experience prior to first-time professional employment, issues of current subject specialty knowledge, curatorial objectivity, and professional development in the mentor-mentee relationship.

The Patrons Demand, But What Do They Really Want?

Forrest Link et al.

Discovery by the Numbers: An Examination of the Impact of a Discovery Tool through Usage Statistics

Jody Fagan et al.

In August 2010, James Madison University (JMU) implemented EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) and placed its search widget front and center on the library home page. This paper will examine general usage trends over the tool’s first two semesters, including changes in physical circulation, library catalog searches, home page traffic, and other database usage. Searches, sessions, and full‐text downloads of subject‐specific databases before and after the implementation of the discovery tool will be compared. Finally, the limitations of the data and our methods will be discussed in order to inform other libraries’ work with similar data. The objective of the paper will be to share information for those considering a discovery tool or those preparing to evaluate a discovery tool that has already been implemented.

Experiences from the Field: Choosing a Discovery Tool for YOUR Unique Library

Jennifer Castaldo et al.

Our users want an easier way to search library resources; currently, there are many discovery tools available, which can seem daunting. How do you know which one will work for your unique library? Librarians from different types of libraries—an online library, a land-grant school, a law library, a private university, and a consortium—describe how they evaluated the available products and made decisions on which tools to implement. A variety of platforms are discussed, including: Ebsco’s Discovery Service, III’s Encore Synergy Discovery, Serials Solutions’ Summon, and even a homegrown solution. Discover what libraries are looking for in these tools, strategies for determining which one best fits your needs, and lessons learned throughout the process from the investigation phase to implementation.

Relevancy Redacted: Web-Scale Discovery and the “Filter Bubble”

Corey Davis

Web-scale discovery has arrived. With products like Summon and WorldCat Local, hundreds of millions of articles and books are accessible at lightning speed from a single search box via the library. But there's a catch. As the size of the index grows, so too does the challenge of relevancy. When Google launched in 1998 with an index of only 25 million pages, its patented PageRank algorithm was powerful enough to provide outstanding results. But the web has grown to well over a trillion pages, and Google now employs over 200 different signals to determine what search results you see. According to Eli Pariser, author of "The filter bubble: what the internet is hiding from you" (Penguin, 2011), a growing number of these signals are based on what Google knows about you, especially your web history; and, according to Pariser, serving up information that's "pleasant and familiar and confirms your beliefs" is becoming increasingly synonymous with relevancy. This session will critique Pariser's concept of the 'filter bubble' in terms of collection development and the possible evolutions of discovery layers like Summon and WorldCat Local, and the challenge of providing relevant academic research results in a web-scale world where students increasingly expect the kind of personalization sometimes at odds with academia's adherence to privacy and intellectual freedom.