A Study of the Demand-Driven Acquisition of E-Book Titles in an Academic Library

A growing trend in collection development among academic libraries is demand driven acquisition (DDA) of e-books, which involves loading large batches of records that meet a library's bibliographic profile into the online catalog. Materials can typically be accessed by patrons as a short-term loan for two or three times before purchase of the title is automatically triggered. This study examined the costs of DDA for a large academic library that went directly to purchase, bypassing the lending process. Pricing information was obtained for each title and circulation information was obtained from the e-book vendor. These data were also collected for e-books that were acquired through approval plan selection. This information was used to generate cost per use data. These numbers were compared to determine whether DDA resulted in a lower cost per use than approval plan selection