Will You Empower Your Patrons to Buy eBooks?

• Main Authors: Law, Sarena, Munoo, Rajendra
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2010
• Subjects: Library acquistions; Patron-Driven Acquisitions (PDA); ebooks.; Library and Information Science
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/library_research/12; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=library_research
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The Assistant University Librarian for Technical Services, Sarena Law, first heard of patron driven access, PDA, while she was a librarian in Hong Kong prior to joining the Li Ka Shing Library at Singapore Management University. After hearing about PDA success stories at the Chicago ALA conference in 2009 she gathered support to try out PDA at the Li Ka Shing Library. Since the Library's mission is to provide service and access rather than ownership of large print collections, deciding to look into PDA was an easy decision. The Library set up a task force to examine the feasibility of allowing its users to 'spend' the Library's acquisitions budget on eBooks. The taskforce recommended a pilot project so as to be the first in Singapore, if not Asia.