Not Your Mother’s PDA: The Transition From PDA Pilot to Full Acquisitions Integration

Western Libraries, an academic library with an FTE of 34,000, and Ingram Coutts, have worked together to implement an e-preferred Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) program at Western Libraries. This implementation has required collaboration between Coutts and Western Libraries collection librarians to develop effective profiles. These profiles allow the PDA collection to be filtered according to subject and non-subject parameters. There are several aspects of this project that make it unique. First, every e-book that is selected by a PDA-preferred profile will automatically be loaded into the catalogue for PDA. Patrons will trigger a purchase if the book is accessed twice. Second, duplication is avoided because our holdings are sent to Coutts on a weekly basis. Third, the PDA program has been implemented across all collections areas at the University. And fourth, if a title is offered in both print and electronic, our default selection is for the electronic. The first objective of this paper is to describe the Western Libraries journey from PDA trials to a system wide e-preferred PDA program. The second objective of this paper is to present our assessment strategy and outcomes of this collaborative project with Coutts