NASIG 2015

Are e-book acquisitions sending you in multiple directions? Do you overlook your collection development policy when the next "too good to refuse" e-book offer comes along? Are e-books prompting an evolution of librarian roles at your library? Join this panel session to hear how two small academic libraries answered these questions and streamlined their collection development activities.

E-book purchasing models - firm, package, Patron/Demand Driven Acquisition (PDA/DDA) - have grown tremendously in recent years. In efforts to seize the day - and the deal -librarians frequently embrace new e-purchasing models without consulting their existing (and possibly outdated) collection development policies. Serials and electronic resource librarians, familiar with bundled journal subscription packages and multi-year discounts, find themselves in the realm of monograph collection development and e-book purchases in order to meet the needs of a growing variety of patrons, programs, and platforms.

Rather than allow technologies or "too good to refuse" offers to continue to drive their e-book acquisition decisions, librarians should reclaim control of their collections. The best way to accomplish this is to create well-rounded collection development policies that incorporate new manifestations of age-old library concerns, such as accessibility of formats, impact on other services, and actual content.

In this session, attendees will learn how two small colleges - both members of larger university systems - confronted similar e-book acquisition concerns and took two different approaches toward revising their collection development policies and economizing their processes. By formalizing the purchasing decisions of electronic formats, libraries can provide the structure needed to support changing staff roles and shrinking resources, as well as address important related issues such as accessibility and timeliness. The panel will present revisions made to their collection development policies to integrate and streamline e-book acquisitions, and share the results of their DDA programs and e-book purchases.