The LJ/SLJ eBook Summit on September 29th offers a variety of speakers and panel discussions relating to eBooks and libraries.  One such session, eBooks and Academic Libraries: Toward a New Best Practice, will discuss the myriad opportunities and challenges in purchasing, acquiring, and accessing eBooks in an academic library.  Speakers, representing publishers, libraries, and consortia, [...]

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iPad, Kindle, Nook or Sony? What is the best e-book reader? Ebooks: The $100 Sweet Spot has been Reached Another Press Stops Publishing – Inside Higher Ed Project Gutenberg: Timeline Events Moving Tales: Do Animated eBooks Have a Future? Sony takes on Kindle with next-gen e-readers – CNET News Espresso Book Machine Spreads to Bookstores [...]

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Last Friday I spoke with Jason Price and John McDonald from Claremont Colleges about patron driven purchasing models.  We discussed many of the benefits and barriers to implementing patron driven models and got into detail about a study Jason and John conducted regarding the use of patron selected titles compared to librarian selected titles.  Here [...]

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Last week I spoke with Michael Levine-Clark, Collections Librarian from the University of Denver, about patron driven purchasing models and how they are being implemented at his library.  Michael has been researching, testing, and writing about patron driven techniques for quite a while and discusses his experiences with me in the interview. I hope to [...]

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Routledge has dedicated two issues of their Collection Management journal to patron driven acquisition.  Volume 35, issues 3 & 4, 2010 – Patron-Driven Acquisitions:  Current Successes and Future Directions. The issues cover 4 general themes – introduction, acquiring print books through ILL requests, acquiring patron selected eBooks, and innovative services/new directions.  I think it’s great [...]

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For the introductory material on the session, please see part one of this blog post. Second group – Lenny Allen, OUP, Erin Igoe, Cambridge UP, Tony Horava, OCUL, Joy Kirchner, COPPUL Lenny – budget and workflow are concerns, always looking a year in advance. Erin – CBO general ebook platform focused on perpetual access of [...]

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I had the opportunity to work with Publishers Communication Group to present the hot-off-the-press results of their study of library deployment of  e-book patron driven acquisition (PDA) programs.  The study was conducted by PCG’s Head of Research Emilie Delquie.  She is still looking for survey respondents so please contact her if your library has a [...]

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Colleagues from the University of California, Irvine Libraries have shared with me their chart (PDA Vendor Chart) for evaluating the patron driven offerings from e-book aggregators.  Please have a look and use if you can.  If you have any questions about the chart please contact Tony Lin at the UCI Libraries.

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Glad to see (press release below) that the patron driven model is going well for another e-book aggregator.  Librarians – please take a look at the PDA survey from ebrary.  It’s extensive, detailed, and asks very specific questions about workflow.  The results should be really interesting. 

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Jason Price and John McDonald from the Claremont University Libraries presented “Beguiled by Bananas: a retrospective study of the usage and breadth of patron vs. library acquired ebook collections” at the Charleston Conference this past November.  Some of the main points from the study were: Are user-selected ebooks used less often than pre-selected ebooks? No. [...]

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