PDA at the University
of Limerick
Cora Gleeson
Caleb Derven
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Introduction
• University context for the project
• Library environment
– Collections Services/ Acquisitions
– Discovery
• Running of the Project
• Lessons Learned and Future Plans
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Background
• Allocation model
• University context
– Library Information Resource Development
Committee (LIRD)
• Collection Development Policies
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Background, Continued
• Annual review of spending
• Enthusiasm for PDA pilot
• Commitment to book purchases
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EBook Usage, 2010 - 2013
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Selecting a Supplier
• Dawson platform
– Familiarity with supplier,
– Close working relationship,
– Procedures, processes already in place,
• Disappointing no print PDA with Dawson
• MIS reports excellent
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Engaging Academic and Library
Staff
• PDA in a strategic context
• CPDs enumerate what the Department
collects
• PDA makes the collection frameworks
practical and actionable
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Engaging Staff, cont.
• Completing the profiles
– Initial form
• Broadening and narrowing the selection of
material
• Balancing the profile
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Discovery
• Initial selection of Summon
• Indexing issues encountered
• Material discoverable in traditional
catalogue and Summon
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Preventing Duplication
• Prepared holdings file for previous two
years
• In excess of 32,000 titles excluded
• Extremely low level of material that failed
to load (< 1%)
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Load to LMS
• 13,635 records loaded over 3 days
• Available immediately in LMS
• Indexing in Summon – 1 week
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Workflows
• Adjusted ebook loading profiles so existing
material was not overwritten
• To facilitate PDA spend analysis, each
purchased title needed an order and
separate LMS item
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Discovery Presentation
• Records discovered by patrons as normal
• Initially, 3 previews, then purchase
• LMS and Summon
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Revising Purchase Model
• After the initial project rollout, we revised
the model to 1 preview than purchase.
• This was based on immediate feedback
from students.
• Next iteration of PDA would need a review
of models.
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Publicity
• Series of targeted emails, blog and social
media posts around accessing ebooks and
Summon.
• Project launched at the start of the reading
week.
• No explicit publicity to faculty.
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Software Concerns and Access
Issues
• Queries logged and addressed through
the Library’s enterprise CMS.
• Issues with browser and software versions
• Occasional issues with accessing titles
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Staff Impact
• Nightly report on spend
• Time impact in terms of manually adding
order and item information to the LMS
• Planning to remove material not
purchased
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Titles Purchased
• Given the large pool of potential material,
there was concern over quality of items
selected.
• The 355 titles purchased, uniformly, were
of a high quality.
• Titles included:
– Called to Account
– Crowdsourcing
– Understanding Digital Humanities
– Public Sector Shock
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Usage
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Spending
• No lower price limit but set a maximum
price of €300 per title (exclusive of VAT).
• The 354 purchased titles gave us an
average cost per title of €115.81.
• Current average purchase for the project
was 4 per day.
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Reporting back to LIRD
• Preliminary data and statistics presented.
• General satisfaction with project
outcomes.
• Commitment to proceed with future
projects.
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Lessons Learned
• Lead-off period
• Discovery and search issues
• Developed new workflows and processes
• CPDS – enabled and constrained
• Publicity
• Project-based
• Purchase model – other vendors?
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The Future
• Smaller ebook PDA with different vendor
• Print PDA
• Approval plans
• Faculty-direct ordering