Moving Toward a Patron Centered Collection Model: A Purchase-on-Demand Project at Indiana State University. Elizabeth Lorenzen and Alberta Davis Comer (Indiana State University)
During the winter of 2003, ISU’s acquisitions librarian and circulation librarian embarked upon a project to provide requested interlibrary loan (ILL) materials via a purchase-on-demand program in order to experiment with faster, more efficient ways to get materials into the hands of patrons for improved customer service. The approach that was favored was to request the books through ILL at the same time as purchasing them through acquisitions, thereby giving a side-by-side comparison between the two methods. It was observed that this project would provide an ideal opportunity to track productivity of individual units, since the time the items remained in each unit would be tracked through the library’s integrated library system.
As the project has progressed, it has moved from being an exercise in instituting more efficient acquisitions methods to an effective collection development process. Both the purchasing and borrowing of titles, along with the use of multiple vendors, has been abandoned in favor of purchasing only through Amazon.com. The intent of tracking subsequent circulations and distributing the resulting information to liaisons is to create a more patron driven selection program.