Effective Selectors? Interlibrary Loan Patrons as Monograph Purchasers: A Comparative Examination of Price and Circulation-Related Performance

Abstract

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.

When the Pilot Is Over: Picking the Program and Making It Stick, Purchase on Demand at the University of South Florida

“…Less than 10% of all borrowing requests were diverted for Purchase on Demand. Similar to what was seen at University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Tyler, 2011) and what has been witnessed in many purchase programs, the Purchase on Demand Books at USF generally had a higher rate of use. POD books were checked out 27% more than all others purchased during the same time period with the same publication dates.…”

A dual approach to assessing collection development and acquisitions for academic libraries

“…Fisher Library should seriously consider a program that purchases interlibrary loan items on a rush basis for the user, and then only uses the interlibrary loan system to request items that are not available for purchase. Purdue University (Anderson, Freeman, et al, 2002), University of Wisconsin-Madison (Ward, Wray, & Debus-Lopez, 2003), and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Tyler, Melvin, et al, 2011) have previously tested such programs. These programs essentially argue that purchasing books requested by ILL when possible rather than using interlibrary loan, are faster, 9 more cost effective, 10 and fill in crucial gaps in the collection.…”

Demand-Driven Acquisitions for Print Books: How Holds Can Help as Much As Interlibrary Loan

“…Second, every book added to the collection has the potential to fill the requests of future local users. This is an even stronger argument, knowing that ILL DDA titles circulate more than titles purchased through traditional acquisitions models (Schroeder, 2012;Tyler, Melvin, Xu, Epp, & Kreps, 2011). Instead of potentially requesting the same item through ILL multiple times, the library's newly purchased copy can support local need for the life of the book.…”