233-250. DOI: 10.1080/13614533.2014.906352.
Five keywords – Patron, Driven, Acquisition, just-in-time, collection
The journal states that the most consistent argument made in support of PDA is that PDA material is borrowed much more often than material selected by librarians or academic staff.
The findings found that over the initial trail of PDA in their university libraries “63% of print PDA orders were placed by students, with the remaining 37% placed by academic staff. Usage among students is higher, but they are the larger cohort and always the greatest users of library books”.(Tynan,McCarney 2014)
The journal discusses the problems incurred using PDA during this time. “The percentage of print PDA material not yet borrowed is, however, a cause of concern. Over 300
print PDA orders were never collected. There are some reasons for this. For example, we
know some academics used print PDA for collection development purposes, and ordered
multiple titles that they did not necessarily want to borrow when received. One academic, for example, ordered over thirty print PDA books within a one hour time frame. Other
academics, from different schools, ordered over twenty titles over the course of the project.These academics ordered these books because they felt the collection needed them, and the opportunity was there, but they did not necessarily want them for themselves. Some orders received were from postgraduate students whose library cards had expired by the time the books they had ordered were received. A lot of the uncollected books were from orders placed in the first month of the new term by students who were new to the university and the library catalogue. They may not have understood how PDA worked, and may have been confused by the PDA MARC records in the catalogue.” (Tynan, McCarney, 2014)
The University of Dublin felt that these problems occurred because PDA wasn’t promoted correctly to the staff and students to ensure it was being used appropriately. Further that the right information on how to use PDA using everyday language and avoiding library jargon wasn’t used with students and staff.