There has been a flurry of interest in programs for collection development through patron-initiated requests. However, some librarians have been concerned that such methods run the risk of producing idiosyncratic collections with poor usage and poor use value. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries have operated such a program through the Interlibrary Loan Department over a fiveyear period. The following study assesses the relative performance of the program's interlibrary loan-acquired monographs in terms of prices paid per rates of annual circulation, relative use at the topical level, and annual rates of circulation.

Numerous publications on patron-driven acquisition (PDA) for print books and similar materials have reported that patronrequested materials circulate more. Tying circulation to selector may be failing to address the complex of factors that contributes to items' circulation. In the present study, the authors revisit a PDA program's data and to determine whether PDA print books' circulation advantage persists when the potential interactions of several additional variables are taken into account. As with prior studies, library patrons were significantly better predictors of circulation than were librarians or approval plans. However, librarians proved to be significantly better predictors than were approval plans.

In the library literature, a great deal of interest in patron-driven collection development has recently been expressed, especially in those programs that link acquisitions with interlibrary loan. However, the implementation of such programs has been limited, at least in part because of concerns over the potential for wasteful spending. The authors will attempt to address this common concern by assessing whether monies spent via a patron-driven acquisitions program were more or less effective than monies spent via traditional modes of acquisition.

Recently, a great deal of literature on patron-driven acquisition (PDA) has been published that addresses the implementation and results of PDA programs at academic libraries. However, despite widespread worries that PDA will lead to unbalanced collections, little attention has been paid to whether patrons' and librarians' purchasing differ significantly. This study analyzes librarians' and PDA patrons' acquisitions at an academic library by relative collecting level and by subject (that is, Library of Congress class and subclass) to determine whether concern over patrons' collecting are warranted.ver the past decade-plus, the library literature has produced a wealth of articles, books, and conference papers and presentations on demand-driven or patron-driven acquisition (henceforth, PDA), and the results reported by the field have been almost unanimously favorable, especially where circulation/ use has been concerned. 1 Likely as a result, numerous academic libraries are considering initiating or have recently initiated PDA programs, and PDA programs have become widespread.2 Esposito, Walker, and Ehling recently estimated that there are 400-600 institutions worldwide with active PDA programs, and, as Walker recently noted, there are "strong indications that [PDA] is becoming an established model." 3 However, concerns over PDA as an acquisition or collection-building method for academic libraries persist. Numerous publications have expressed, or at least acknowledged, librarians' worry that doi:10.5860/crl.75.5.684crl13-496 Don't Fear the Reader 685patrons, because they make requests for items solely to meet immediate needs and do not have institutional collection priorities in mind, will purchase popular or nonacademic items via PDA or will lard their libraries' collections with topically idiosyncratic or otherwise inappropriate materials. 4 Other literature on the topic has noted that PDA could be understood to be reducing, if not subverting, subject specialists' control over their collections and collection budgets.5 Finally, some recent literature has even gone so far as to warn that, if patrons' collecting were to diverge too greatly from librarians', over time PDA could lead to overly narrow or to poorly balanced collections that do not meet researchers' long-term needs.6 Librarians, therefore, need to be wary lest "a shift to a patron-initiated collections model not result in gaping holes in the collection that would be difficult to back-fill at a later date."7 As Dahl has summarily put it, the arguments against PDA "suggest it is shortsighted and allows collections to be developed based on current needs, trends, and hot topics."8 This apparently not uncommon attitude no doubt led one PDA survey respondent to adamantly assert, "PDA cannot function as the primary collection-shaping device for any research library that hopes to fulfill research needs in the future," and may have prompted Rick Anderson, arguably one of PDA's stronger advocates, to similarly quip in a recent online dialogue, "If your goal is...