Does the Library

Have This Book?

Evaluating our Patron Driven Acquisitions plan for Nursing
Sydni Abrahamsen, MLIS, AHIP, and Kevin Pardon, MLIS, AHIP

Introduction
Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) is a growing method of collection development in academic libraries that follows a Just-In-Time model versus the more traditional
Just-In-Case model. At Arizona State University we implemented a PDA plan in 2009. Neither author was involved in the creation of the initial PDA profiles, nor any
changes that have taken place since.
We wondered:
Nursing Subject Patron Driven Acquisition Results based
• Is our current PDA plan working adequately for subject areas in the Health Sciences, specifically nursing?
on Acquisition Plan Profiles and Doody’s Core Titles
• And if not, how can we improve our collections practices?

Methods
448 Titles Treated
for Approval Plan

91 Titles
Not Treated

We analyzed our PDA plan using the Doody’s Core Titles List for Nursing.
Using Doody’s allowed us to generate a starting list of key titles in the field of
nursing to examine. We took each individual title within the Doody’s list and
searched for it within our PDA Plan vendor platform Coutt’s OASIS. First,
we noted if a given book was marked for approval and whether our PDA
profile was applied to that title. If a given book was run against our specific
PDA profiles we noted whether the title was included for patron selection or
if it was excluded and why.

Results
The entire 2014 Doody’s Core Titles List for Nursing contains 539 unique titles. We found that 448 of
these titles were treated for approval by our vendor, meaning they were matched against our institutional
approval plan profiles. Of these 448, 345 failed to meet our profile guidelines. See the graphic on the
right for a breakdown of the numbers and reasons. In addition, 8 newly-published titles are listed as “title
for consideration,” meaning they have not yet been evaluated for patron selection. The remaining 95 titles
were chosen for patron selection in our vendor’s system, but only 26 were clearly loaded into the catalog.
For the other 70 “patron select” titles, it is unclear whether a
Nursing Essential Purchase
record made it into the catalog. Only 5 titles were ordered
Titles included in PDA plan
by patron selection.

4%

Discussion & Recommendations
An alarmingly low number of the total Doody’s Nursing list were ultimately loaded into our catalog as a
part of our PDA plan. One reason for this may be the fact that our plan prioritizes ebooks and university
presses. To ensure that more nursing titles make it through to the catalog for potential selection, we
plan to make some changes to our profile to include more publishers, sub-imprints, and book types. If
implementing or maintaining a PDA plan it is vital to:
• Consistently review, and update your PDA plan profiles
• Periodically evaluate results of your PDA plan - Is your plan working as expected? Are titles you would
expect to make it into your plan being excluded for some reason?
• Create alternative buying procedures for essential titles that do not fit the PDA model.

Not Included in Patron Driven Acquisition List:
Not Included in Patron Driven Acquisition List:
Library ofinCongress
(LC) subject
Not Included
Patron Driven
Acquisition List:
classification
not included
Library of Congress
(LC) subject
Library
of Congress
(LC) subject
classification
not included
classification not included
Publisher not on approved list
Publisher not on approved list
Publisher not on approved list

Not applied to
Coutts
algorithm
Not applied
to
Not
applied
to
Coutts
algorithm
Coutts algorithm
Book type did not
meet
Book criteria
type did not
Book
type did not
meet criteria
meet criteria

Included in Patron Driven Acquisition List:
Included in Patron Driven Acquisition List:
Included
in Patron
Driven
Acquisition
Chosen
for Patron
Selection,
statusList:
unconfirmed
Chosen for Patron Selection, status unconfirmed
Chosen for Patron Selection, status unconfirmed

Publication pre-dates
start
of planpre-dates
Publication
Publication
start of planpre-dates
start of plan
Subject Sub-Classification
not
included
Subject
Sub-Classification
Subject
Sub-Classification
not included
not included
Chosen for Patron Selection, status confirmed
Chosen for Patron Selection, status confirmed
Chosen for Patron Selection, status confirmed

Price over profile
price
Price cap
over($300)
profile
Price
over($300)
profile
price cap
price cap ($300)
Title for Consideration
Title for Consideration
Title for Consideration