PDA Metrics: Stop Worrying and Trust Your Users

This webinar was presented live on 09/30/2015. Access the recording and materials nows:

• webinar recording | YouTube video
• presentation slides

Is your library still on the fence about shifting your collection and development policy to include PDA? Have you considered going all in and letting your customers drive your print and electronic collection completely? If so, you’ve probably gone through a list of trepidations about how your collection might turn into an unbalanced, out of control, financial disaster. We are here to assure you that your fears can be put aside and you can trust your customers.

In the summer of 2011, the University of Arizona Libraries implemented a unique PDA program called On Demand Information Delivery (ODID) which acts as the main driver of both our print and electronic collection. We negotiated new contracts with our eBook vendors as well as provided purchase links in our catalog to print material. In short, we lessened control of firm order purchases and let our customers purchase resources as they needed them.

In an effort to determine the success of the program, a project team was created and charged with creating a set of metrics which would ultimately inform us on how well the program was doing at maintaining a relevant and cost effective collection. This presentation will address the process of creating the metrics (including barriers discovered throughout the process), the data gathering tools used, and ultimately, how our collection has changed as a result of the ODID program.

What you will learn is that our customers made purchasing decisions which were largely congruent with our own, they purchased less material, and used what they purchased. This ultimately freed up enough resources to allow us to purchase large book packages that were not available through PDA and which we wouldn’t have been able to afford without PDA. Join us for this discussion about our experience implementing PDA and possible future directions.