Patron-Driven Ebook Model Simmers as Ebrary Joins Ranks
By Josh Hadro Oct 14, 2010There is a wide variety of developing ebook sales models, but few have the self-evident appeal of Patron-Driven Acquisition (PDA; also sometimes known as demand-driven acquisition, or DDA).
With an announcement this week, ebrary is the latest major vendor to add a patron-driven option, joining EBL (Ebook Library), NetLibrary, and Ingram's MyiLibrary in offering this popular acquisitions model. The ebrary program will initially make available some 155,600 titles, more than half of the 274,000 titles ebrary touts on its overall platform. Publishers listed in this initial release include ABC-CLIO/Greenwood, Cambridge University Press, Elsevier, McGraw Hill, Palgrave Macmillan, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley.
Ebrary's foray into PDA has been in the works for nearly two years; a pilot program with about 20 major research libraries began in November 2009 following an exploratory discussion at ALA Midwinter conference in February of that year.
As with the popular EBL service, libraries will load a selection of records for potential titles into the library's catalog. When a user discovers an item of interest, they'll be able to explore the title at no initial cost to the library. After a certain amount of use, however, a purchase is triggered, and that title is added to library's collection, charged as either a single-user access price (usually list price for an ebook), or the higher multi-user access price, depending on the preference of the library and on the availability restrictions put in place by the publishers.
Crucially, the process is automated and seamless to the user, who is unaware of the transaction.
Positive response
Nearly all librarians sharing pilot PDA experiences report positive results, to say the least—one report from Duke's patron-driven project indicated that the $25,000 set aside for the project was spent in just 14 days.
That quick spending is a testament to the success of the PDA model, said Nancy Gibbs, Department Head of Acquisitions at Duke University, who added that the funds would have been spent even more quickly had the project been advertised. Since joining the ebrary pilot in November 2009, Duke has purchased 347 titles in two similar two-week periods, spending $25,000 and $24,000 respectively.
To throttle spending and stretch allocation dollars, Gibbs said selecting librarians imposed a floor on imprint date and a ceiling on price. Moreover, future forays into PDA will focus on targeted collections in green energy and global health to start. And though Duke has not yet completed its analysis of the usage of those patron-selected titles nearly one year out, Gibbs said she was "extremely confident that the books continue to be used."
Abdicating responsibility?
Still, there remains an undercurrent of criticism. Some say the model sacrifices curation for convenience, diminishing the role of collection development librarians and outsourcing critical selection duties. Michael Levine-Clark, Collections Librarian at University of Denver and a presenter at LJ's recent Ebook Summit, said he's heard it all before, and isn't persuaded.
He dismantled the arguments in quick succession: by taking librarians out of the equation for certain standard titles, "we're actually freeing up selectors to work on the harder stuff."
He added, "critics say 'we know what to select and our users don't,' but half of what we buy doesn't get used." To those who claim that PDA-built collections will be lopsided, he points out that libraries already buy specifically for the faculty they serve rather than some idealized scholar—"it's a myth that we're building these collections completely evenly anyway." And there's no reason a balancing title can't be added later, he said, given that ebook availability ostensibly means works going out of print is less of a concern.
"We guide what gets put into the catalog," he said, dismissing the idea that PDA allocations will be wasted on irrelevant titles. "You don't put in records [for titles] that you don't want users to buy."
But the most compelling argument to Levine-Clark's mind is the flexibility PDA offers as a means of getting content to students and faculty. "Right now, we are narrowing down the universe of titles to whatever we can afford." But, he said, librarians are on the verge of being able to "think about the collection not in terms of what you've purchased, but [in terms of] what you have the potential to purchase."
Some publishers reticent
It's no secret that many on the publishing side of the industry are not thrilled at the prospect of PDA-dominated library collections. Publishers Weekly, reporting on the annual meeting of the Association of American University Presses, wrote that "[p]ublishers ... experienced shock and awe at a session on demand-driven library acquisitions." Levine-Clark, who spoke on the panel, admitted, "there was some hostility."
The hesitance is understandable—PDA all but ensures that fewer copies will be sold of most titles, and that a book's success will in large part will be determined by the quality of a MARC record and the relevance it can muster amid thousands of other potential purchases.
These are problems publishers and libraries will have to hammer out if their long-standing reciprocal relationship is to endure. But with ebrary now joining the PDA ranks, it seems that the number of institutions adding pressure on the library side will only increase.
