The University of Arizona Libraries (UAL) is heavily invested in patron driven acquisitions and acquires much of their materials this way. Since 2011, UAL entered into an agreement with Coutts Information Services for two PDA programs, one print and one electronic. It took time to work out the kinks of two programs in different formats but we’ve successfully gotten them both working. As of July 2013, UAL added a third PDA program, which is for electronic resources only and is through the vendor Yankee Book Peddler. It is based on the same profile that we use for our Coutts programs. We added this third PDA program so we could take advantage of the different ebook platforms that are offered from the two vendors. Users may select from a richer and more complete offering of academic titles. Obviously this has added a layer of complexity, especially with the handling of duplications.
The objective of my poster session is to walk attendees through a visual representation of the workflow of our three PDA programs, including upfront planning, steps in the process, troubleshooting, and a summary of what works well and what needs improvement.
I plan to encourage attendees to talk about their PDA programs and to find out if there are any other libraries that are also using multiple PDA programs to meet the needs of their users. This would hopefully spark constructive dialogue on process improvement and innovation within PDA programs in academic libraries. I want attendees to my poster session to take away ideas of how implementing multiple PDA programs in both print and electronic formats with more than one vendor could work at their institution.
