Simplify your electronic demand-driven acquisition program

Swinburne University of Technology library began offering demand-driven acquisition (DDA) in July 2006. "We were one of the very first ones in the world to use the demand-driven acquisition model of purchases," said former Resource Management Librarian John Butera. Swinburne University began by loading MARC records for all 34,000 EBL ebooks into the catalog for unmediated loan, and they set parameters to purchase an ebook after the third loan. The system auto-purchased the first book on the first day DDA was available. Today, more than 600,000 ebooks are available through Swinburne's DDA program.

John explained, "The reason we were interested in WorldShare^® Collection Manager is because of the DDA." Collection Manager makes it possible for John's team to keep the catalog updated with high-quality MARC records. When the e-collections available through Swinburne's DDA program are updated or changed, or when the library decides to update its profile with vendors to adjust which titles should be available, "I get an email notification that files are available for me to download. From WorldShare Collection Manager, I just select the files, and they get downloaded to my computer." From there, John uploads them to the integrated library management system.

"If the MARC record isn't available at the time we get the collection, we can make a short record for those. Then, those get overlaid by full records from OCLC," John explained. "Once the workflow is set up, it minimizes the amount of manual effort that's involved." He continued, "We rely on the vendor and OCLC to notify each other that there is a full MARC record available for a short publisher record. We just load them, overlay our short record with the full record, and away we go." 

Those high-quality records help the library staff identify trends in library usage. From January to June 2013, staff noticed that the library acquired a nearly identical number of librarian-selected e-books and DDA e-books. Since then, 21% of the librarian-selected e-books have circulated, compared to 100% of the DDA e-books. The staff also compares the usage of print versus electronic collections. "If the data is not consistent, the whole procedure is compromised," John said.

Despite how complicated it could be to manage high-quality records for changing e-collections and DDA purchases, John finds it easy to teach others his workflows with WorldShare Collection Manager. "It's an easy transfer of information," he said. "Other staff members can run the procedure, and it's a pretty seamless transition of the tasks." He added, "We spend less time on managing electronic content, so we can now dedicate that time to managing the physical collection."

Library at a glance

• Collection development policies support an explicit preference for electronic resources over print resources
• Special collections include design and art, Swinburne history, and course guides dating back to 1964
• Provides students with online access to past exams sorted by semester and course